Kevin Duffy on the selfishness and irrationality of capitalism

Q: Why is libertarianism not generally called pro-capitalism?  Is it just a way of saying you support a more extreme version of free market capitalism?

A (partial): What I fundamentally dislike about libertarianism is how selfish it is.  I also resent how many of them assume their positions are preeminently “logical,” and that their own superior reasoning “proves” the superiority of their myopic worldview.  Human beings are not rational machines.  They are not fundamentally logical.  We are far more nuanced than that.

Duffy comment: You have a point. Individuals act in their own self interest.  They also can act irrationally at times, especially when in crowds. 

Fair enough, but shouldn’t we apply the same principle to government officials?  What puts them above these human foibles? 

The difference is that individuals trading with others must use persuasion, i.e. they have to make each other better off.  Call it selfish all you want, but free markets are mutually beneficial, win-win.  This doesn’t mean people don’t make mistakes or have regrets after the fact, but going into the trade, they only do so if they expect to benefit.  And when things don’t work out, that failure imparts information.  People learn. 

Government officials, on the other hand, use coercion.  THEY decide what is best for society and tell everyone what to do.  Resist and you end up in jail or worse.  The political class (the government and its cronies) lives at the expense of the populace, win-lose.  These people are far from selfless.  In fact, they lie, cheat and steal all the time. 

This is not to say the people have no say in the matter, but it is the majority who count, not the minority dissenters.  Government officials know this, which is why they constantly play to the crowd.  Their stock in trade is propaganda which works by simplifying the complex to a political slogan, playing on peoples’ fears and pitting one group against another. 

The defenders of such a system can only do so with semantics, calling mutually beneficial trade “exploitation” and government coercion “selfless.”  Sorry, but your system is built on brute force.  No amount of spin can give it moral superiority over a system of freedom.

~ Kevin Duffy, Quora, May 13, 2022