On the contrary, a capitalist believes there is abundant evidence that increased competition in any market almost always generates positive externalities, and is a net benifit to the community. Endless volumes have been written on this topic, and while there have been some attempts to argue the opposite case none of the ones I’ve seen are especially convincing. So ‘open a business instead’ isn’t a thoughtless reflex, it’s a carefully considered opinion about what course of action has the highest likelyhood of generating positive results in an uncertain world.
The first half, of course, is a lot less firmly supported. While unearned wealth certainly has a tendency to produce negative side effects, there isn’t a lot of hard data on how strong this trend is. Certainly, it seems hard to argue that a starvig man is worse off if you give him a free loaf of bread.
Of course in reality it generally isn’t possible to give large amounts of resources to the needy, especially in poverty-stricken nations. Whever you try it the local kleptocrats will quickly arrange to steal the majority of your donations and use them to maintain their own power, so the real effect of most international charity is simply to prop up corrupt regimes and allow them to get away with oppressing their own people.
On the contrary, a capitalist believes there is abundant evidence that increased competition in any market almost always generates positive externalities, and is a net benifit to the community.
Hm. Well, this is reasonable—competition is pretty nice. But if you have a society that’s just plain old less efficient than ours—uses lots of human labor rather than industrialization, doesn’t have good economies of scale, etc etc—and I go in and open up some store that simply offers lower prices on widgets than the local stores can offer, this doesn’t particularly increase competition. The other stores aren’t going to build economies of scale overnight, they simply go out of business, and so now I have all the local widget sales.
So ‘open a business instead’ isn’t a thoughtless reflex, it’s a carefully considered opinion about what course of action has the highest likelyhood of generating positive results in an uncertain world.
On the contrary, a capitalist believes there is abundant evidence that increased competition in any market almost always generates positive externalities, and is a net benifit to the community. Endless volumes have been written on this topic, and while there have been some attempts to argue the opposite case none of the ones I’ve seen are especially convincing. So ‘open a business instead’ isn’t a thoughtless reflex, it’s a carefully considered opinion about what course of action has the highest likelyhood of generating positive results in an uncertain world.
The first half, of course, is a lot less firmly supported. While unearned wealth certainly has a tendency to produce negative side effects, there isn’t a lot of hard data on how strong this trend is. Certainly, it seems hard to argue that a starvig man is worse off if you give him a free loaf of bread.
Of course in reality it generally isn’t possible to give large amounts of resources to the needy, especially in poverty-stricken nations. Whever you try it the local kleptocrats will quickly arrange to steal the majority of your donations and use them to maintain their own power, so the real effect of most international charity is simply to prop up corrupt regimes and allow them to get away with oppressing their own people.
Hm. Well, this is reasonable—competition is pretty nice. But if you have a society that’s just plain old less efficient than ours—uses lots of human labor rather than industrialization, doesn’t have good economies of scale, etc etc—and I go in and open up some store that simply offers lower prices on widgets than the local stores can offer, this doesn’t particularly increase competition. The other stores aren’t going to build economies of scale overnight, they simply go out of business, and so now I have all the local widget sales.
It happens to be a claim that meshes with an identity as “capitalist,” and shows signs of being protected from details by the first good argument.