Saturday, January 21, 2012

Quote of the Day: Blaming Capitalism

It would be correct to describe this state of affairs in this way: Today many or some groups of business are no longer liberal; they do not advocate a pure market economy and free enterprise, but, on the contrary, are asking for various measures of government interference with business. But it is entirely misleading to say that the meaning of the concept of capitalism has changed and that "mature capitalism"--as the American Institutionalists call it--or "late capitalism"--as the Marxians call it--is characterized by restrictive policies to protect the vested interests of wage earners, farmers, shopkeepers, artisans, and sometimes also of capitalists and entrepreneurs.

The concept of capitalism is as an economic concept immutable; if it means anything, it means the market economy. One deprives oneself of the semantic tools to deal adequately with the problems of contemporary history and economic policies if one acquiesces in a different terminology. This faulty nomenclature becomes understandable only if we realize that the pseudo-economists and the politicians who apply it want to prevent people from knowing what the market economy really is. They want to make people believe that all the repulsive manifestations of restrictive government policies are produced by "capitalism."

The great Ludwig von Mises clarifies and defends what capitalism is all about.

And exactly as Prof von Mises describes, present day detractors equivocate and fudge on the terminology, and importantly, misrepresents on the causation of events. Critics usually point to effects of massive interventionisms, which they impute to as the cause of what for them constitutes as "market failures". They mistakenly imply that incumbent policies have had neutral effects on the markets.

All these signify as vain attempt to mislead people.

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