Liberals Are Not Anti-Capitalism!

This post was originally written on 1/15/2012

That's it.  Everybody out of the pool.  The piss me off button has just been pushed, and now it's time to talk turkey.  I just read yet another article that basically boiled down to "Republicans believe in capitalism, Democrats want everyone to get everything for free."  Now I feel like I have to explain, as if to my third grader, why this is false.
      We all have a rough idea of what capitalism is, right?  Hopefully you do, because it is actually something that doesn't have a clear definition.  Basically it means that people or businesses own stuff, and sell it to other people or businesses.  The Free Market is another term that gets tossed around with capitalism a lot, and that means that people or businesses that are selling the same stuff can all sell their stuff at the same time, and compete for customers.  Very simplified explanation, but remember- third grader.
      In the United States, we have capitalism, as opposed to socialism or communism or whatever other ism.  Businesses set up shop, decide on a product or service that they want to sell, and then compete with other businesses to try and sell more of their stuff to people who want to buy it.  Socialism means that pretty much everything is owned by the state, and in turn the state takes care of the needs of it's citizens.  Communism means that everything is owned by the group equally, and everyone is entitled to an equal share.
     It is not my intention to discuss the relative merits of each system, or get into how well each system is working out for the countries that practice them.  Frankly, it is really hard to apply any of these systems to an entire country, so very few of the well known countries have been successful in sticking with any of these systems in their purest form.  There is always a little bit of each type of system being used to keep a country and it's citizens going, because in all reality each one works a little bit some of the time.
     As far as the United States goes, we're mainly fans of the capitalism thing.  People who own businesses are usually big fans, and people who buy from those businesses are fans most of the time.  But pure capitalism does have it's problems.  Because with pure capitalism, everything must be purchased to keep the system healthy.  People buy stuff so that businesses can afford to make more stuff for people to buy so that...get it?
     Taking it back around to politics; somewhere along the line, The Republican Party decided that they were the party of capitalism, the supporters of business, and the party for the people who owned or wanted to own businesses.  When that got decided, Democrats (the other guys) got cast as being anti capitalism, bad for business and our way of life, blah , blah , blah.  This isn't really an accurate characterization, because Democrats like making money just as much as the next guy, we just tend to realize that not everything can be about making money.
     Personally, I can agree with most of what your average Republican political candidate says about everything except for the hot button social issues.  What I cannot agree with is what they actually mean.  When they say that the US government should stop spending like it's water, I can agree with that.  But when what they mean is that the US government should stop spending money on everything except the stuff we say you should that just so happens to increase the profits of this multi-billion dollar company that I happen to know the owner of, well then all of a sudden I don't agree with them quite as much.  When they say that government should be less intrusive in our daily lives, I'm down with that.  Until you catch on that what they are asking for is for government to stop telling them that they can't dump toxic chemicals into the water supply, then it's whoa, hold on there.  Especially when right after they say less government intrusion, they say government should make laws about who you can consider to be your family.
    Back to capitalism.  We have always been a capitalist society.  True, back when our country was getting started, there was a lot more bartering, and a lot more going out and getting things for yourself rather than buying them, but that's because not many people were flush with cash, most people didn't live right around the corner from a Kwik E Mart, and business owners had to be pretty certain that the product or service they were selling was going to be in demand before they gave up their day jobs to start a business.  Then business was focused on providing the things that people couldn't provide for themselves.
    The problems came, as they usually do, when we added a lot more people and then got more serious when technology joined the scene.  More people means more workers.  More technology means less labor is needed to do the jobs that the people used to do.  So more people are sitting around wondering what to do to make money so they can buy stuff.  If nobody is hiring, then what do you do?  You find something that you can sell to the people who have jobs!  Hooray!  All the problems were solved.  As the farms got machines and needed few hands, and the factories got machines and needed fewer laborers, more small businesses popped up to sell people more stuff.
    Eventually you get to the point where just about every idea has already been thought of.  Businesses already exist to provide the people with things they need, and another business that opens up selling the same thing as someone else means either both of them are going to earn so-so money, or one of them just isn't going to make any money at all because people like buying from the competition better.  So then what do you do?  Well, think of something else to sell them.  Something they don't need, but maybe you can convince them that they need it, or at least make them want it really bad.
    Time passes, and everything that anyone could ever need or want is for sale somewhere.  But we're still adding people, and technology is still cutting the demand for workers.  Times start to get kinda hard, and pretty soon you have a lot of people, but not a lot of them are making money.  This kills off the little businesses first, but eventually even the big businesses are feeling the pinch, because broke people don't buy anything that they don't absolutely have to.  Then someone hits on a brilliant plan.  What if I could figure out a way to MAKE people buy my product?  How do you make them?  Well, pass a law of course!  And how do you pass a law?  Darn, you can't.  But government can!  Suddenly you have businesses working with government officials to force people to buy that business' product.
    Let's give an example, shall we?  Let's examine water.  Now, people didn't always buy water.  It's in the ground and in lakes and streams, you just went to where the water was and carried it home.  Or you dug a well and it came to you.  Digging wells and carrying water is pretty hard work, so at some point an enterprising person decided to create a business around digging wells.  Then another person decided to create a business around running pipes from a stream or reservoir.  At that time, people could choose to either continue to get their own water, or pay someone else to do the hard part for them.  Eventually it occurs to someone that it would be a great idea if towns ran pipes from where the water was to each house.  So towns paid for this service, and collected money from the people who lived in the towns to pay for it.  Of course, people could still choose not to have a pipe run to their house, they could still dig their own well, or carry it from the stream.  The business owner wasn't happy that people didn't want to buy his water, so he got together with the government of the town and got a law passed that everyone in the town had to get their water from the city source, no more digging your own well.  Once that law was passed, the Water Company could start charging people whatever he wanted to charge, cause it was illegal for them to not use his water, and they certainly can't do without water.
      This is the problem that many democrats, myself included, have with capitalism.  It's not that the whole system is bad, it's that it has limits.  It is limited by the needs and wants of the consumer.  Business owners never want to hear that they can only expect to make so much from their business, and so the unscrupulous business owners try to use government to guarantee a profit even if the free market just isn't that interested in buying their product.  I can go out and buy the ingredients to make my own lemonade at home.  I may decide, when I have spare cash, that I'd rather pay more to buy it from a company that sells it ready made.  But if I have a short paycheck due to an illness, or just decide that I want to go back to drinking homemade, I don't want the lemonade maker to convince the government to force me to buy lemonade.  Especially if the government is also going to make rules that make it harder for some other lemonade maker to come into town and compete with the first guy.; which forces me to buy lemonade from him at whatever price he wants to say it's worth.
      On a final note, the other problem with the idea of capitalism is that we really don't have a "free market."  In a free market, every business is left to it's own devices, to succeed or fail on their own.  A business that mismanages itself into bankruptcy goes out of business in a free market, they don't get infusions of capital from a source that will not make a profit on that investment.  Having the kind of fallback plan that leads to government bailouts, that is Socialism, plain and simple.  When only certain companies that offer a product or service qualify for that type of assistance, their competitors are not free to compete with them in the market place.
       So, capitalism is good.  Greedy, corrupt business owners and the politicians who work for them are bad.  Class dismissed.