As an economic system, Capitalism is nothing but the only economic system that has worked well throughout human history, added to the scientific method and industrialization. It has no moral component, other than the demand for honesty in business, diligence at work, and–for success–imagination.
It is as wrong to say greed has no part in it as to say greed has everything to do with it. All people, for all of history, have wanted more than they had, absent some comforting social narrative, like Hinduism, Buddhism, or Christianity. What they would normally do is invade other nations, and take their stuff. This was as creative as they got.
Socialism is simply a variant of this, in which the “invasion” is domestic, making the paradigmatic socialist war the civil war. Quite obviously, most deaths from Communism were caused by those in power, and inflicted on those whose welfare they purportedly cared about. Softer versions of this simply lead to economic impoverishment. Tax rates are a tool of war, too, and those enacting them forget that those able to amass wealth are generally much more skilled at keeping it than the State is at stealing it.
The point I wanted to make, though, is that at root much of the driving energy of our economy–at least when it is growing–is that same restless energy that led previous nations to war. Rather than fight with guns and bullets, we fight with aggressive ad campaigns, price cutting, innovation, and business structures.
This is a vast improvement over shooting wars. It is an enormously powerful engine for material prosperity. At the same time, it is not the energy of contentedness. It is not the energy of stability.
In my imagination, I look to a world in the future of villages. I look to a system of economic and social life that is relatively stable, and in which most people feel no need to venture that far from home. This can be brought about, I think, through social innovation, through increased skill at the cultivation of happiness, both as individuals and as communities.
What I would hope to see is a gradual reduction in the restlessness that leads us to fight one another so hard. A key component in this will be winning back the control of our money, and stabilizing it. Building wealth should be much easier than it is currently.
That’s all for now. Things to build.