…in a conversation between an in-house tutor and a humanities teacher. The tutor said something to the effect of…
“So I asked her, between capitalism and socialism, which one will result in a greater class differences. And she answered ‘capitalism’.”
The lilt in her voice made it obvious that she was excited that the student she was talking about got the “right answer”. The humanities teacher responded,
“Oh yeah, we went over that the week before” or something to the same effect.
Never mind that the operation of a market tends toward the equalization of wages and profits. And never mind that you’re not likely to find any sharper (or more permanent) class difference within true capitalism as you’ll find between a commissar and a half-starved peasant living under communism.
I knew my school indoctrinated our students with the anti-capitalist mentality. But I didn’t realize before today how overt it was.
Thanks to class discussions (in a Canadian public school no less), I learned that in America sick, poor people die on the streets. The teacher added in her own sob story: my sick friend can barely afford pharmaceutical drugs children. Do you feel guilty yet? Does any one of you dare dissent?
Well, there’s always the bright side. Challenging the parasitic foremans of the meat puppet factory aggrandized their mid-life crisis.
Yea that happens all the time. Everytime I leave the house I have to throw another dead proletarian into my trunk of one of my 4 BMW’s to get him off of my uber capitalist street. Usually there’s a few beggers at the door and I occasionally grab my bag full of moneiz and throw pennies at them from my roof until they leave. I’m so glad that I don’t have any sort of government rules at all to put a stop to my evil greed [6]
You write as if those examples were arguments against freed markets. Why? Those are our arguments: Government causes poverty. Government is the reason poor people die on the streets.
Only libertarians can justifiably use the “What about the poor?” line.
the writer basically says something about not understanding why some parents might believe there is a liberal agenda in the public school system… which is understandable because liberals are always oblivious to liberal agendas… but what i found interesting were the comments… some of them were supportive of the article but there were several commenters, teachers themselves, that saw public education for what it is… and finally there was one commenter who described a horrific experience with her children and the local school district.
personally, i am having problems with my daughter’s kindergarten teacher. my daughter Gabby is very strong willed and has problems with transition, which means that once she becomes engaged in an activity, she resists giving it up to move on to the next activity. but since Gabby is a discipline problem, i have a 25 year old government bureaucrat mistreating my daughter and making veiled threats, presumably about contacting social services…
one really has to wonder if the conspiracy theorists who suggest that public education was brought about to break up the family unit and indoctrinate children in marxism aren’t right on the money.
No monopolies (all monopolies are government granted). No regulations, licensing laws, patents, or copyrights means much easier market entry for entrepreneurs. But I am sure you know this.
My socialist indoctrination began at age 13. In “limited government” school, we were shown films of Greenpeace activists saving the whales, which ultimately led to the “conversations” about the evils of capitalism (evil Russian whalers are killing whales for profit, etc. Ironic that they used a Communist industry to illustrate the point). In time, the conversation was expanded to demonstrate that, in general, “profit kills people”. It took many, many years to unscramble my mind from the damage inflicted on me. And, I owe it all to the “service” provided by “our” “limited government” education system. Tax dollars at work.
I’m not sure in what context you’re saying this, but I would say something different: capitalism increased the real compensation of everyone, but it increases the real compensation of some quicker than others, thereby creating and widening class differences. Case in point: Bill Gates vs. a street beggar. Bill Gates’s wealth could not have existed without capitalism. The street beggar, though he has benefited from capitalism a little, has barely benefited at all. So without capitalism, I would say that the wide class disparities between Bill Gates and the beggar could not have existed. Instead, there would be a lesser class disparity between, say, Senator Lieberman and the [poorer] street beggar if we lived in a socialist society.
“If we assume that there are no institutional barriers preventing or penalizing the transfer of capital goods, workers, and commodities from one place or area to another and that the workers are indifferent with regard to their dwelling and working places, there prevails a tendency toward a distribution of population over the earth’s surface in accordance with the physical productivity of the primary natural factors of production and the immobilization of inconvertible factors of production as affected in the past. There is, if we disregard the cost component, a tendency toward an equalization of wage rates for the same type of work all over the earth.” (Mises, HA, 21.9)
and this notion…
“First of all we must realize that entrepreneurial profits are not a lasting phenomenon but only temporary. There prevails an inherent tendency for profits and losses to disappear. The market is always moving toward the emergence of the final prices and the final state of rest.” (Mises, HA 15.9)
He might also never have existed to the extent that he does without being shielded by interventionist barriers to entry.
The street beggar is a creature of interventionism.
“As far as there is unhampered capitalism, there is no longer any question of poverty in the sense in which this term is applied to the conditions of a noncapitalistic society. The increase in population figures does not create supernumerary mouths, but additional hands whose employment produces additional wealth. There are no ablebodied paupers.” (Mises, HA, 35.2)
That sums up my experience living in England for a few years. I worked my butt off and had a meager existence to show for it. Other people did nothing and got the same kind of life as me for free. Oh well, I guess that system equalized us, all right! [^o)]
Well, capitalism does result in more income inequality than socialism. This makes sense theoretically and can be observed empirically.
So I am not sure why you are offended by these remarks alone. Unless they said something like “socialism results in less inequality and that’s a good thing” there is really nothing to object to.
sometimes though, capitalism does mean rather equal incomes. Take boston in the 1680s I believe -they were capitalist but the proportions of wealth that each class had were mostly equal. I think whenever a new market is exploited, the tendency is for incomes to start equal in relation to that market and later, to become unequal.