Of all the systems mankind has devised to allocate scarce resources, capitalism is - by far - the best at increasing supply in response to demand.
The enforcers of every other ideology invest a great deal of effort into making people forget that simple, powerful truth.
Politics, ideology, economics - in the end, it boils down to figuring out who gets how much, because there will never be enough for everyone to have everything. Even if we had some magical technology that produced goods from thin air, our time would still be limited and valuable.
The cold, hard truth is that capitalism - private citizens owning capital and freely investing it to create profit - is the system most likely to increase the supply of scarce resources to meet demand. We have seen this demonstrated time and again since the Industrial Revolution.
The reasons are not difficult to understand, although as mentioned, collectivist ideologues put a lot of effort into obscuring those reasons. Millions of free people seeking profit are always going to be better at developing resources than central planners and tyrants.
Part of capitalism's superiority lies in the value lost through compulsion. Other systems must *force* people to develop resources. No matter how much velvet they layer over that iron fist, it never works as well as free people voluntarily pursuing their ambitions.
Capitalism makes the entire population more conscious of value. They seek the best value for their money and investments. They DEMAND it. Millions of people seeking value every day are more likely to find it than cloistered central planners and power-hungry politicians.
What does a socialist do when demand outstrips supply? They either force greater production - inevitably screwing it up, because socialists understand nothing about production - or they forcibly suppress demand. They ration everything, making sure the elites get the good stuff.
High demand for scarce goods and services is an opportunity for capitalists, but a crisis for socialists and communists. Generations have mocked "chasing the almighty dollar" - and forgot it's vastly preferable to running away from the almighty whip.
You know that leftists are keenly aware of capitalism's absolute superiority because their favorite tactic is pretending they can conjure goods, services, and benefits out of thin air. They have no answer to "who pays for all this stuff?" so they attack anyone who asks.
A healthy capitalist system can sustain a very generous welfare program. It's far better to let capitalism generate wealth, with all of its freedom and muscle, and use a REASONABLE portion of that wealth to accountably help the unfortunate, than to "socialize" misery.
But we're now in the endgame of a decades-long attack on capitalism whose objective is to sever the poor and middle class from capital entirely. Generations have been re-educated to think benefits and entitlements are preferable to owning and profiting from capital.
Soon it will be all but impossible for anyone but the wealthy, and the State, to own capital and invest it for profit. We're approaching the point where only rich people can afford property or create business enterprises - which means only the rich can say "no" to the State.
Preferring socialism to capitalism is choosing magic over science. You're surrendering control over your life and destiny to people who claim they can conjure "free" stuff out of thin air. The likely future will be the State saying "no" to YOU when you make demands it can't meet.
Socialists understand so little about the creation of wealth that they think it IS magic. They think their sorcery will be more "fair" and "just" than the witchcraft capitalists keep using to accomplish what the Left said was impossible - producing instead of rationing. /end
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Has any political party in the world attacked its own country with the stamina and intensity of the Democrat Party after 2000? From unleashing crime on the streets and weaponizing the federal bureaucracy, to Joe Biden's all-out War on the Middle Class, they've been relentless.
Looking back, 2000 seems like a real turning point for Democrats. They had all kinds of bad ideas before that, and some of those ideas did a LOT of damage, but after 2000 the party grew increasingly and openly obsessed with punitive policies, destroying and rebuilding America.
Maybe it was the 2000 election itself and the bitter partisan hangover. Maybe it was cultural and political turmoil on the Left after 9/11, the ugly dawn of the "Why do they hate us so much?" chickens-coming-home-to-roost response to terrorism.
Few cheap political hacks deserve to be hoist on the petard of their own rhetoric more than Joe Biden, so it's fun to see him called a racist for imposing "travel apartheid" on Africa, as the U.N. Secretary-General put it - but why should we treat travel bans as illogical?
We're told travel restrictions are nonsensical because "Omicron is already here" - but why is it unreasonable to restrict travel from places suffering major outbreaks, reducing the number of additional infections entering the country? What happened to "flattening the curve?"
What happened to "If it saves just one life?" Every case of this ostensibly super-dangerous variant prevented from infecting Americans is potentially saving lives. Total case numbers are constantly invoked as a crisis metric, so why not reduce cases with travel restrictions?
Roe v. Wade was wrong and everyone knows it, including ferocious defenders of abortion. They excuse its legal and ethical deficiencies because they agree with the outcome - and thus were generations of "ends justify the means" political corruption unleashed.
You can't say you love democracy if you also think democracy should be jettisoned like rubbish every time there's a crisis, every time the ruling elite need to impose a "correct" decision on the entire country through fiat. Roe helped launch our drift toward authoritarianism.
Sure, you can talk about "freedom" and cast your silly little votes - but the really important decisions will be made on high by the Anointed Ones and imposed from coast to coast through inescapable decrees. You are not allowed to vote on a growing list of "settled" issues.
One of the most consequential turns in modern politics was the post-Reagan Left bullying Republicans, and many conservative pundits, away from discussing morality or using moral arguments to drive their agenda. It was an incredible coup. We're really just starting to push back.
Maybe the Left was able to pull it off because Bush I and Quayle were so awkward about discussing moral issues, even when they had the better arguments, as demonstrated by those "Dan Quayle Was Right" op-eds many years later. They *sounded* wrong even when they were right.
We ended up with the libertarian-sounding formulation of "fiscally conservative, but socially liberal" and the retreat bugle toot of "you can't legislate morality!" Meanwhile, the Left plunged full speed ahead as fiscal and social liberals who gleefully imposed their morality.
ALL government spending is a tax increase, the taxes always hit the middle class hardest. The only question is when and how the new taxes will be extracted from your wallet. Right now, you're paying through inflation, and you ain't seen nothing yet.
It's remarkably easy to trick people into forgetting that nothing is "free." It's a lesson we all learn as children, but politicians manipulate adults into forgetting it. Intelligent people become gullible fools when the offer of Free Stuff comes from political hucksters.
The big swindle of the past few decades was tricking people into thinking Big Gov could provide oceans of Free Stuff forever by simply racking up the national debt. Nothing has to be "paid for!" We'll just print more money, maybe punch out some trillion-dollar platinum coins.
Lefties assume everything is static, which is not surprising for an ideology that prizes obedience as the most valuable resource. They are confounded by dynamic responses and unpredictability. They really think $1 in tax hikes should produce $1 in government revenue.
This is why socialists think the trappings of middle-class life can be distributed as government welfare benefits to create an acceptable facsimile of prosperity. What's the difference between buying food and using food stamps? Between earning income and receiving benefits?
But economics is all about both the journey AND the destination. Assets have little true value when they're at rest. Their value comes from what we do with them, and how those decisions are made. Every economic action creates energy, including the negative energy of cost.