Whaddya Mean Capitalism is not Working ?

Capitalism is not working for a lot of people in New York City. It’s not working for young people.

Dear me. Here we have the whole world fainting because Tucker Carlson dared — dared — to interview Nick Fuentes, and Peter Thiel says something completely off-the-charts wacko. Capitalism not working? Capitalism works every minute, every hour, every day, for everyone, whether you like it or not.

Surely Peter Thiel knows this.

What is not working right now is the mountain of government programs and regulations and left-wing conceits that are piled high on capitalism like spices from India on an overloaded camel. As with most animals, when you cruelly overload them, they start to groan with pain.

Another thing that is not working is the famous liberation of women that began a couple hundred years ago with the world’s First Feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Only last week I wrote a deeply philosophical Substack post “Our Woman Problem,” on the subject. I say that “women’s liberation” has not liberated women, but rather enslaved them. Women don’t like it, and they are complaining about it. But they have no idea that they are enslaved. They complain, I imagine, because like George Eliot’s Lisbeth Bede, they complain in order to be soothed.

So maybe that’s why the most enthusiastic Mamdani voters in New York City seem to be young women college graduates with woke studies degrees. Maybe they are just complaining in order to be soothed.

Now I wrote a couple of weeks ago at AT that the tech lords, with Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel in the vanguard, are presently engaged upon a Tech March Through the Institutions with consequences that nobody can yet foresee. Let’s just say that the tech lords were present in battalion strength at Trump’s inauguration for a reason. And let us suppose it is connected to Peter Thiel’s patronage of JD Vance.

So I speculate that Peter Thiel talking about capitalism not working is a strategic misdirection play directed at the real culprits that are failing to make America work for ordinary people: the politicians and their aides and staffers, the NGOs and the billionaires behind them, the administrators, the regulators and our beloved mainstream media. But don’t tell our dear liberal and DSA friends; there is no need for them to bother their sweet little heads about that.

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Still: what is Peter Thiel’s game here? Is he quietly working behind the scenes with JD Vance waiting for the right moment to nuke our liberal friends into orbit with the help of Elon Musk and SpaceX? We shall see.

Meanwhile, let’s get back to reality. It is ridiculous to speak of “capitalism” working or not working. Capitalism is just humans doing what they do to the extent it is not prevented by politicians and administrators and regulators.

I’ll tell you what’s not working: it’s the liberal dream. Or should we say: their fantasy. They knew better than feudal lords. They knew better than absolute monarchs. They knew better than the crude businessmen that invented machine textiles. It was nothing to them that businessmen and inventors revolutionized world transportation — particularly for the ordinary person — with steamships and railways. Actually, when you think of the five technological revolutions analyzed by Carlota Perez in Technological Revolutions there’s been nothing like it, ever. Certainly, all the liberal politics of the last two hundred years would have gone nowhere without the rocket ship we call capitalism. Where would the politicians have found the taxes to fund their heavenly visions without the money from capitalist growth and prosperity.

No. Let us be clear. What isn’t working today are big-government liberal programs.

Item: liberals dreamed of the wonderful world they would create for the workers. Pity the unions and benefits priced workers out of their jobs.
Item: liberals dreamed of the liberation of women from the oppression of patriarchy. Today women are miserable, especially childless educated women.
Item: liberals dreamed of civil rights for blacks. Then they ruined it with racial quotas for blacks,
Item: liberals dreamed of human rights for gays. Then they ruined it with men in the women’s bathroom.
Item: liberals dreamed of saving the climate from the nightmare of rapidly increasing plant food. But now capitalist Bill Gates says maybe CO2 concentration isn’t a problem.

Oh, now I get it. When we say capitalism isn’t working, we really mean that capitalism isn’t fixing the endless mistakes and injustices of liberalism.

And really, they have a point. What’s the point of capitalism if it isn’t a couple of standard deviations smarter than your average liberal bear?

And if capitalism can’t overcome all the stupidities and injustices of liberalism and make young people feel that, despite all the liberal propaganda they have ingested in 20 years of government schooling, capitalism works for them, then what’s the point?

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill blogs at The Commoner Manifesto and runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: Gage Skidmore

Related Topics: Capitalism, Economics

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