Ben Stein has an interesting short book called The Capitalist Code: It Can Save Your Life and Make You Very Rich .  He aims it mostly at young people as a combination of financial advice and a defense of capitalism. The advice part of the book is essentially to save some money to invest in stocks as a way to hitch a ride on the incredible wealth generation capitalism provides.  He says that when “we hook up our lives to the mighty engine of capitalism,” we’re generating wealth to deal with the wide array of uncertainties in life. On the subject of employment, Stein “will always advise working at one loves,” and “we might as well be prisoners as work in jobs we loathe.”  I agree with this to an extent, but we have to meet the world halfway.  If all the people who love painting landscapes tried to make a living at it, 99% would starve.  You have to choose among jobs that have some hope of paying enough money to live. To those who might doubt the benefits of capita...

I listened to a radio piece about the recent Wall Street protests that are spreading primarily around the U.S. and somewhat in other countries as well. One speaker repeatedly made reference to “global capitalism” and the problems it causes. I suspect that I agree to some degree with the speaker, but he and I have different definitions of “capitalism”. A key part of capitalism is competition. We have capitalism when a market has many producers and consumers and no one participant or colluding group of participants dominates the market. This definition automatically precludes anything that is too big to fail. Just because a company is in the private sector doesn’t mean that its actions are automatically capitalistic. In fact, the goal of most companies is to grow to dominate their markets and manipulate prices to destroy competitors and undermine real capitalism. If we really had capitalism worldwide with governments setting sensible rules concerning product safety and other ...

Most Canadians and Americans will say that they are believers in capitalism. But when push comes to shove, we’re often very annoyed by the consequences of capitalism. A good example I experienced recently came when stiff winds uprooted trees, lifted roof shingles, and destroyed fences in my area. In the aftermath there was a run on fence posts and bags of cement. All the local suppliers ran out for about a week. If the suppliers had raised prices during peak demand consumers would have screamed that they were being gouged. A part of capitalism is the idea that prices rise and fall with changes to supply and demand. If suppliers had raised prices high enough, only those who really wanted their fences fixed right away would have bought materials and there would not have been any shortage. By being spared the consequences of capitalism in this case we had to put up with shortages. Rather than having the materials go to those willing to pay the most, they went to those who arri...