Personal Freedom and the Moral Case for Capitalism (Russell Roberts and Ayaan Hirsi Ali)

This is from the Human Prosperity Project of the Hoover Institution.

A lot of people reject capitalism because they see the market process at the heart of capitalism—the decentralized, bottom-up interactions between buyers and sellers that determine prices and quantities—as fundamentally immoral. After all, say the critics, capitalism unleashes the worst of our possible motivations, and it gets things done by appealing to greed and selfinterest rather than to something nobler: caring for others, say. Or love. Adam Smith said it well: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.”

Capitalism, say its critics, encourages grasping, exploitation, and materialism. As Wordsworth put it: “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” In this view, capitalism degrades our best selves by encouraging us to compete, to get ahead, to win in business, to have a nicer car and house than our neighbors, and to always look for higher pro†ts and advantages. In the great rat race of the workplace, we all turn into rats. Is it any wonder so many want to kill o‡ capitalism and replace it with something more just, more fair, more humane?

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