The Evils of Capitalism, Personality of Success and Breaking Through Barriers

My name's Ryan Daniel Moran, and on today's episode, we're going to talk about the evils of capitalism.

I find it offensive in 2017 that we use Trumpisms as the intro for Freedom Fast Lane. And that you have all these Tribe members who are making all this money while the 1 percent suffers.

Earlier this month, I was with a family member and with my daughter, Esther. And my family member was playing with my little girl. And we were just having a conversation because of the new administration.

I don't know if you guys heard, but there's a new president, and it was a big deal here in America, at least here in Texas.

And my family member and I we were talking politics, and she said, "You know, I don't know that I really like capitalism."

And this is the point where I said, "Do you know "what I do for a living?"

And she said, "Yeah, you run businesses."

And I said, "Do you know that I run Capitalism.com?"

And there was an awkward silence.

But what it did was it opened up a really great conversation of really why I started Capitalism.com in the first place because here I was with someone that I trust, someone that I respect and even admire, and she was sharing her perception of capitalism, which is the exact reason why I felt the need to shift the conversation.

Because my generation seems to have this view of the evils of capitalism, that there's the evil 1 percent that get rich and successful on the backs of everyone else. And that they need to be either paying their fair share, or they need to be giving back.

There are two things that I want to hit here that I think most people miss when they're exploring the tenants of capitalism or the evils of capitalism. The first is that, what is your alternative?

The alternative to freedom is force, and force by government is always more dangerous, always creates more exploitation, always creates more inequality than does freedom.

Because freedom is simply voluntary exchange. And when there is voluntary exchange, there is a creation of new wealth.

If I create something new, and you want it, we have created new value. That's why there is no fixed pie. There is an unlimited pie.

You can have as much pie as you want, and it does not limit the amount of pie that I can have.

So the idea of fair share is a misnoner... misnoner, which is like a misnomer.

It's a misnomer because there is no fixed amount, so a fair amount is what?

We can produce as much as possible. That's the beauty of freedom. That is the beauty of capitalism.

It's why we teach entrepreneurship because when someone comes in, and they create value for themselves, they have also created value for someone else. It's new value, not just taking from somebody else, which brings me to my second point: the idea that there should be giving back or those who are at the top did it only by exploitation.

The point here is that by, if we assume that there's voluntary exchange, that means in order to get to the proverbial top, that means that there had to be an immense amount of value creation in the first place. There had to be a provision of value to many other people in order to get to that position.

So the idea of giving back, or paying your fair share, that already happened. It happened on the way to the top. You created new value for somebody else. That's how you got there.

You have been rewarded for providing something into the marketplace. That's how they got there. By creating a value that other people now get to enjoy.

So giving back is fine if that's what you want to do, but you have already paid your tab by actually creating the value in the first place. This isn't what people are talking about.

People just like to make comparisons, and it's rational because our brains only know how to do that. Our brains look at inequality, and it says, "there's this person here, and this person here. This is a problem."

All our brains know how to do is compare. What is hot? What is cold? What's beautiful? What is ugly?

Whatever you're comparing it to. What's successful? What's a failure?

Whatever you're comparing it to.

It's why those who chant, "we are the 99 percent" forget the fact that they're actually in the 1 percent of the world's wealth.

Because if you make, what is it? - $28,000 a year - you're in the world's top 1 percent of wealth.

But when you don't see that on a regular basis, your comparison is a little bit different.

When capitalism has been experimented, when freedom has been experimented, it has only worked every time, and when exploitation or fascism or socialism is experimented with, we all see how that ends.

Capitalism is the best shot that we have at solving the world's problems.

Government is a way of protecting the freedoms that allow you to enjoy more goods and services, to enjoy unlimited upward mobility, and to enjoy the creation of solutions to new problems because profitability is the greatest measure of progress.

That is why capitalism and entrepreneurship is so important.