Wednesday, May 22, 2019
Don't Blame Capitalism
People still don't realize that a lot of crises aren't because of unchecked capitalism, it's the opposite: checked capitalism. More precisely, checks on the wrong things.
I'm not saying you should have no regulation of capitalism, but a lot of the bad effects of "capitalism" are from regulating one side of the coin and not the other. If both were deregulated, economics would cause them to check/balance each other.
Examples:
1. In the San Francisco area, the homeless/housing crisis is because, as there had been growth from successful start-ups, there were barriers to building more housing. If housing growth was "unchecked" like capitalist start-ups, there would be a lot less homeless people.
2. The Great Recession is seen as caused by greed and capitalism (mortgage lending out of control, speculation driving up housing prices), but the root cause was the Federal Reserve increasing the money supply to ease the dot com bust to make Washington look good, rather than letting the 2000-2001 recession work itself out naturally.
3. The failure in deregulating energy, which lead to greed like Enron trading and California paying high utility prices was caused because only one side of the market was deregulated.