Category Archives: Capitalism

UPDATED: Fired Up Over Firing

Business, Capitalism, Economy, Elections, Free Markets, Political Philosophy, Private Property, Reason, Republicans

As I pointed out weeks ago on an RT broadcast, Newt Gingrich attacked Mitt Romney for what are the prerogatives of private property and the fiduciary duty of a CEO managing private property: firing people or evicting them from private property.

Rush Limbaugh doesn’t quite put it in such uncompromising terms, but he points out today what a feat of unparalleled moronity is the specter of “capitalism being attacked by the Republican” presidential front-runners.” “It’s senseless. It doesn’t make any sense,” gushes Rush.

Establishment conservatives only acknowledge reality once their own kind awakens to it, in this instance, Romeny’s vigorous defense of profits was noticed by Rush due to National Review’s Jay Nordlinger, who has rightly derides Mitt Romeny’s anti-capitalism detractors.

“Over and over, Romney defends and explains capitalism. And he’s supposed to be the RINO and squish in the race?” The one guy out there defending capitalism, the one guy out there trying to explain corporate profits to the Occupy crowd, he’s the squish, he’s the moderate, he’s the guy that we have the problem with? “That’s what I read in the conservative blogosphere, every day. What do you have to do to be a ‘real conservative’? Speak bad English and belch?

[Don’t bother to post here in reply if you are unable to separate this episode from the actors you dislike, and are wont to launch into a, “I hate all establishment conservatives, therefore I, lazily, refuse to address anything they say or do, right or wrong, and demand that you, Ilana, appease my idiocy.]

UPDATE: Paul defends Romney ‘fire’ comment and history at Bain. Good for him.

What is interesting is that dumbo Dana Bash—a CNN reporter whose love for Obama is second only to Jessica Yellin’s, another CNN pack animal—spun the Paul response as strategic, rather than principled. She’s not even an “analyst,” for what that title’s worth at CNN, yet she’s parsing a Paul response for markets (a thing she has no grasp of) as a response for politics. Yellin is now, as I write, yelling with excitement because, naming anonymous sources (isn’t that a no-no in Journalism, unless a matter of life-and-death?), she has had confirmation from her Man’s camp (BHO), that Romney has unraveled in the past 48 hours. Weird. Didn’t he just win a New Hampshire Primary?

Freak Street

Business, Capitalism, Economy, Free Markets, Government, Justice, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Taxation

The freaks of the Occupy Wall Street (bowel) movement make it plain that they want what Charles Payne of the Fox Business Network has worked so hard to attain. Their case? That Payne, who began his business in a Harlem basement apartment, with monies borrowed from family and friends, owes his success to the rabble and its willing sponsor, government.

Yes, statists and their prized sponsors—moochers and looters—like to claim that if not for the state, to whose coffers they hardly contribute—man would be unable to produce.

That’s like saying that the tick created the dog! Production predates government predation. Government doesn’t produce wealth—it only consumes it. What, pray tell, would government have fed off if people were not hard at work well before the advent of the bureaucracy? As usual, the statists have it topsy-turvy. First came the individual—he is the basic unit of society, without which there can be no society. And without man’s labor there is no wealth for government to siphon.

Meet two more good Americans: Derek and John Tabacco, proprietors of a small business on Wall Street. The two businessmen staged a counter-protest against the Occupiers, holding up neon green signs that read “Occupy a Desk!“ and ”Get a Job.”

“We got a bunch of small business owners together…and we thought that ‘hey, any good occupation couldn’t be ended without some resistance,’” John told Fox News, adding that there was a coalition of about 50 small business owners who are part of his movement.
“They were coming after us , they were screaming at us, trying to get in our face, putting their hands on us,” he said. He also identified with the “53%” — the group that pays taxes that the other 47% doesn’t — and said the “silent majority” was giving them the thumbs up during their counter-protest.

[The Blaze]

Predictably, the slimy Salon.com tries to discredit the Tabacco brothers’ case for industry and work by discrediting them.

Centrally Planned Scarcity

Barack Obama, Business, Capitalism, Economy, Free Markets, Political Economy, Regulation

In a free market, consumers direct supply and demand. And in a free market, increased demand leads to increased supply, as producers compete with one another to meet the demand.

We are being told that there is a “shortage of crucial medicines including cancer drugs,” and that “President Barack Obama on Monday signed an executive order aimed at remedying the shortage.”

Remedying? Really? At least one of Mr. Obama’s regulatory sleights of hand will increase the scarcity it seeks to remedy: hounding drug sellers for “charging exorbitant prices for scarce medicines.” High prices for scarce goods are what help to harmonize supply and demand.

Alas, “You can’t fix stupid”. The reported shortages in 178 drug—most involving older, generic, cancer drugs administered by injection, as well as antibiotics to treat infections and nutritional drugs for patients who can’t eat—would have been rectified in an unimpeded market:

The shortfall of supply has obviously followed a sudden urgent demand for these drug. Large demand and short supply would initially send the prices of these drugs rocketing. Profits in an unhampered pharmaceutical market would signal to the many drug makers that it’s time to enter into production.

Mr. Obama, however, has taken further action to shortcircuit the street signs of the market—profits.

When there is a shortage of a good in a highly regulated market such as ours, it is safe to say that it is a result of government incursion into the economy. Somethings gets between the market and the consumer—in the case of these drugs, the culprits are Food and Drug Administration regulations and the patent system, which gives a drug company a lengthy monopoly over manufacturing.

‘The Program’ Behind The Occupy Wall Street Protests

Business, Capitalism, Democracy, Economy, Individual Rights, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Private Property

Tired of listening to mealymouthed left-libertarians laboring to find commonalities with the Occupy Wall Street “sleepover”? You should be. I know I am. I have no sisterly solidarity for socialists.

Here’s the stark reality of this extravaganza: Within the buildings are people beavering away, working for a living. Railing against them without—sitting idle in the parks, streets and on sidewalks—are individuals who trash, scream, sleep for hours on end, loiter, strip down and publicly body-paint each other, copulate and defecate.

Economist George Reisman dissects the farrago of economic errors the protesters and their sympathizers commit: “What the protesters do not realize is that the wealth of the one percent provides the standard of living of the ninety-nine percent.”

Read “How a Highly Productive and Provident One Percent Provides the Standard of Living of a Largely Ignorant and Ungrateful Ninety-Nine Percent” by George Reisman.