Wednesday, September 19, 2001

America blends socialism, capitalism
Commentary by Chris Diggs

God bless this country in our time of peril.

“No politico-economic system in history has ever proved its value so eloquently or has benefited mankind so greatly as capitalism — and none has every been attacked so savagely, viciously and blindly. The flood of misinformation, misrepresentations, distortion and outright falsehood about capitalism is such that young people today have no idea (and virtually no way of discovering an idea) of its actual nature,” said Ayn Rand, the forerunner of capitalist doctrines in the last 30 years.

I must explain she was born in and escaped Soviet Russia, which was a Marxist, communist and socialist society. I categorize these three as one because their forefathers were Marx and Lenin, and all three place the collective’s wants over the individual’s rights and freedoms.

Now let us take a look at some of these falsehoods.

The foremost disillusion is, “Why would we want to embrace capitalism? Look at our society now.”

Our society is not a pure capitalist society. It is defined as a mixed economy-welfare system, meaning that the economic and political theory is mixed with socialism and capitalism.

In socialism, controls are used to “manage” the economy, yet capitalism is used to allow individuals and businesses to pursue their rights to a limit. When they are doing better than the system thinks they should, the government initiates force and steals an individual’s property and gives it to another individual who did not produce it.

Welfare’s downfall is both the initiation of force it creates and the crippling effect it has on an individual. One could say, “Why should I improve my methods and generate more profit when the government is subsidizing my life?”

Unfortunately for humanity, there has never been a model of pure capitalism, although all of its ideals have been tested with positive results. The world’s best example of a capitalist society was 19th century America minus the racism and slavery.

Another argument against capitalism asks, “What system could justify paying professional athletes and corporate executives hundreds of times as much money as teachers, policeman, doctors or garbage collectors?”

In pure capitalism, wealth is created through an individual’s intelligence and character applied to their situation or environment. The reason why some professionals are paid more than others is based on what they produce and how they market themselves.

As a CEO, can you control the destiny of thousands of employees’ immediate future? Can you create new ideas and business models to increase profits? Can you explain to a board of directors who have invested millions in your firm why your stock price has gone down 20% even though sales climbed dramatically? Can you determine ways to increase employee morale before productivity drops?

If you answer “yes” to these questions, what happens when the anti-capitalistic government’s anti-trust department says you’re doing too well, you have succeeded too greatly?

The professional athlete, all their life, has trained and perfected their body and overcome other obstacles to become famous. Can you sprint up and down a basketball court for 48 minutes, while bouncing a rubber ball, as five other players try to take that ball from you, and generate the correct slope to put the ball through a net?

The socialist wants to limit the player’s income. This is the same player who sells out arenas, from which taxes are generated to fund a large portion of any cities’ public services budget that in turn funds many teacher’s and policemen’s paychecks.

Chris Diggs is a freshman e-business major from Dallas. He can be contacted at (c.e.diggs@student.tcu.edu).