Ironically, my definition of the term is 180 degrees from yours. I think the libertarians who are waiting for good old yankee ingenuity to restore the economy are the cargo cultists. And I worry about anyone so eager to dump on compassion as some sort of character flaw.

The Chinese have opened the mother of all Wal-Marts on the edge of USA Town, and we’re running over there to buy cheap rope to hang our own workers and merchants. When I complain that maybe we need to protect ourselves from cheap labor, I get this religious cant about how we’ll think up something better for them to do because American workers are the most productive in the world, as if that were a trait of the workers and not a consequence of machines doing all the work. They just need to hang in a bit longer.

Sometimes, man’s best interest is served by cooperation in life’s prisoners’ dilemma. That takes coordination by government. Otherwise, we get the tragedy of the commons, as we each assume the worst about our neighbors’ powers of restraint, based, of course, on our assessment of “human nature.” Libertarians have no tool in their bag for that circumstance, so the wish it off into the cornfield like Billy Moomy on the old Twilight Zone.

Then, they tell us to wait for the Great American Capitalist, who will invent anti-gravity, employ 20,000,000 Americans to make hovercraft, and keep the formula in a safe where the Chinese cannot get it. I mean, that’s what we’ve always done, right? And our ship will surely come in.

De Soto cares for the poor, but through honest observation he learned that only a true capitalism based on secure property rights can enable their hard work to actually result in a rising standard of living.

rob sama: I would recommend De Soto’s book with the “but” I mentioned in the entry. I’m going to move on next to Easterly’s The White Man’s Burden, which recently won a Hayek Award.

Kim and Katrina: thank you very much! We couldn’t have asked for a more delightful baby to adopt. The best news is that his happiness and cuteness fit right in with the rest of the Browns.

Burgess: such actions are only implicitly “covered” by Laissez-faire Capitalism. The only rights that need to be enumerated are those of life, liberty and property. Everything else is subsumed by these. Thus an LFC constitution would not treat freedom of religion, speech, sexuality etc., since such specifics only serve to weaken the idea that freedom is freedom, and that men live by right and not by permission.

Most likely, though, you were simply referring to Capitalism as the political system of liberty, as contrasted with the view that it’s all about the money. No implications from my part. I’m picky about legal technicalities since law, more than anything, must be a flawless reflection of a complete philosophy.

One question that you might someday want to address as needed in your future writing is this contentious one: What is “capitalism”? Its attackers have their own “definitions.” Even its defenders, however, do not seem to operate with the same concept (and therefore definition) in mind.

A formal, but concise definition might help readers capture capitalism’s many implications.

My own definition (inferred from that of philosopher Ayn Rand) is that capitalism is a political system (the genus) that has one purpose only (the differentia), the protection of individual rights (especially the rights to life, liberty, and property) from aggression and fraud.

One consequence of capitalism is a free market, but a market is only part of a society.

Individuals do engage in actions outside the marketplace. Those actions too are covered by capitalism as a rights-protecting political system. Examples are (1) choosing a certain color of paint for one’s house, even if one’s neighbors (and their political representatives) don’t like the color; and (2) choosing sexual partners and practices with any consenting adult, regardless of religionists’ dictates.

I always find the contrast between America and third world nations to be a great argument against liberal American politicians who cry about helping the poor here. What poor?

There is no one in America who lacks opportunity. I’ve even seen critically disabled people lead successful lives. There are plenty of people who lack motivation, unless they are getting a government handout.

No, for the true “poor” of the world, one has to look at places like Ethiopia. Ironically, the problems there are similar to the problems here: poor government, which makes poor people.