She begins by complaining that capitalism has hollowed out the “liberal” movement — liberals want to praise capitalism for its benefits, but ignore its downside. Instead, Bruenig suggests, “It’s time to give socialism a try.” Why, pray tell, would we try a system of government interventionism that has ended, every time, in heartbreaking poverty and mass death? (No, Sweden and Denmark aren’t socialist countries — they’re capitalist countries with redistributionist tendencies.) Because, says Bruenig, the ills of our society are almost entirely the result of capitalism. She excoriates Andrew Sullivan of New York Magazine for embracing capitalism while lamenting the rise of nationalism. She complains about Joe Biden, whom she says whines uselessly about America being “better than this.” She says that Americans are “isolated, viciously competitive, suspicious of one another and spiritually shallow; and that we are anxiously looking for some kind of attachment to something real and profound in an age of decreasing trust and regard,” and that all of this is “emblematic of capitalism.” Never mind that America’s social bonds remained strong while capitalism was ascendant; never mind that government interventionism has coincided with a breakdown in social cohesion; never mind that government-enforced conformity has a rude way of destroying “attachment to something real and profound.” No, it’s that we shop around for our products at the local grocery store. That’s the problem, obviously.
It gets worse. According to Bruenig, capitalism “encourages and requires fierce individualism, self-interested disregard for the other, and resentment of arrangements into which one deposits more than he or she withdraws. (As a business-savvy friend once remarked: Nobody gets rich off of bilateral transactions where everybody knows what they’re doing.)”
This is pure nonsense. Of course capitalism promotes individualism. So does liberalism, the root of human rights. And even the most ardent capitalists, like Ayn Rand, forcibly reject the idea that we should resent voluntary economic arrangements — in fact, believers in free markets see such resentment as the root of socialism, not capitalism. Furthermore, everyone gets rich off of bilateral transactions where everybody knows what they’re doing. In fact, that’s the only way to get rich. If you screw someone, you can’t very well have a repeat economic transaction with them. This zero-sum mentality only applies to socialistic misapprehensions about the nature of free and voluntary exchange.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/27954/wapo-columnist-pens-frightening-defense-marxism-ben-shapiro
It gets worse. According to Bruenig, capitalism “encourages and requires fierce individualism, self-interested disregard for the other, and resentment of arrangements into which one deposits more than he or she withdraws. (As a business-savvy friend once remarked: Nobody gets rich off of bilateral transactions where everybody knows what they’re doing.)”
This is pure nonsense. Of course capitalism promotes individualism. So does liberalism, the root of human rights. And even the most ardent capitalists, like Ayn Rand, forcibly reject the idea that we should resent voluntary economic arrangements — in fact, believers in free markets see such resentment as the root of socialism, not capitalism. Furthermore, everyone gets rich off of bilateral transactions where everybody knows what they’re doing. In fact, that’s the only way to get rich. If you screw someone, you can’t very well have a repeat economic transaction with them. This zero-sum mentality only applies to socialistic misapprehensions about the nature of free and voluntary exchange.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/27954/wapo-columnist-pens-frightening-defense-marxism-ben-shapiro
