I'm not really super concerned about economics right now. I've been a capitalist for the last several years on the grounds that I figured capitalism would do the best job of protecting freedom and protecting human rights. I'd gotten, really, to the point where I had concluded that capitalism was a more decisive and powerful force in the West than the nominal governmental structure of democracy, and I didn't really have much of a problem with that.
Well, if I'm going to give capitalism credit for its successes (the so-called "long peace", the near-total eradication of the lowest forms of poverty), I've also got to assign blame for its failures, and I'm counting this as one of them. That said, I don't judge capitalism as harshly as I judge democracy right now. With democracy, it's kind of a "You had ONE JOB!" kind of thing. The job of capitalism is not to ensure human rights or to ensure freedom. It's to create wealth. Freedom and human rights are kind of "nice to haves" under capitalism. They're generally convenient.
What we don't know yet is how capitalism and, more importantly, capitalists are going to react to what happened today. In the recent past, many capitalists have used their power to forcefully advocate for human rights. I think we may perhaps see a "struggle for the soul of capitalism", which seems weird because my basic assumption is that capitalism is soulless and amoral. But the results of that struggle will, I think, to a large part determine the long-term survivability of capitalism.
You know, I wasn't a big fan of the inherent inefficiencies of centrally planned economics, but I tend to be a little more upset about the Gulag and the Holodomor. Nobody wants to starve, but from where I am now the economic system or theory that can convince me it will do the best job of supporting human rights is the one that's going to have my support.
Hope you're paying attention, Mark.
