How Capitalism AND Central Planning Failed

A war is being waged on capitalism.  And for capitalism.  In America.  It is as if we are being asked to decide between governing economic systems.

But the founders of our Republic did not create an economic system.  They created a rule of law--the Constitution of the United States.

In 2007 and 2008, financial markets collapsed.  Wealth evaporated.  It was a certain indication that, unchecked, capitalism is rapacious.  Armed with evidence that capitalism is effete, antagonists reacted against it.

Thereafter, reactionist economics was used to justify extra-legal and otherwise unconscionable redistributions of property and rights.  Recently, industries like banking, insurance, the auto industry, and green energy have become part of central economic plans centrally funded--with your money.

But apparently, this intervention has not improved the economy. 

Much of this economic activity, of capitalism and of central planning, from at least 2007, has contravened existing law.  It has made investment in the American economy uncertain and unprofitable.  Wealth has been redistributed without regard to justice or the rule of law. What's worse, wealth has been redistributed away from those who uphold or would uphold the rule of law (ie. the middle class).

But the economic cures we have been offered were the wrong prescriptions.  As cure for Wall Street's confiscation of Main Street, we were prescribed central economic planning by government.  Capitalism, unchecked by the Constitution, failed; now, central economic planning, unchecked by the Constitution (see my post "Is Justice Alive and Well?") is failing:  high unemployment persists and the middle class is worse off.

So, what is missing?  We've tried economic solutions.  The economic solutions we've tried put science (ie. economic science) above the law.  Now, we are worse off.  But reason would suggest that even science ought to be beneath the law.  Otherwise, ours is a rule of science.  And science has shown how it operates: in laboratories; by experiments.  Do we want to be human experiments in a world laboratory?

As a governing unity, economic science has an abysmal record.  Economic plans and capital controls invariably become despotic social plans and human controls.   For example, in Russia, the idealism of Marx became the realism of Stalin.

Perhaps, some say, China is an exception? After all, the gross domestic product of the Chinese economy has probably now surpassed the U.S. GDP. This is remarkable. But is it sustainable? Has the record of China surpassed America's record on human rights, household wealth, stability, and duration? We note that the Peoples' Republic of China was constituted in 1949 while the Constitution of the United States was ratified in 1788.   Has any nation, in all of the world's history, enjoyed as prosperous a tenure as has the United States?

Here, then, is what is missing in our economy: the rule of law.  In its absence, property and prosperity went missing.  Let's return to the rule of law.  If we can reinstate the Constitution as the supreme law, we can expect economic prosperity by and by--without egregious confiscations of property by others (ie. Wall Street) or for others (ie. presumably the less fortunate).

Fellow Americans, don't be deluded by economic arguments. Let's defend the Constitution of the United States. Economic prosperity will follow.  God bless you!


Whoseman


Dear reader, if you are not American, this may sound heartlessly nationalist.  Understand that we want you to enjoy the rights American citizens have enjoyed under the Constitution.  Can we ever enjoy these rights together or separately if we Americans shrug off what Abraham Lincoln called "the last best hope of earth"?