Right. Watch And Learn.

Ok then.

Now, that was famous economist, Milton Friedman, discussing the reasons that capitalism works. (This came from jacksecret, who posted the video and a really good essay by someone else about capitalism.)

The flaw, of course, in his argument is that it implies that it is because "we're all good at heart, inside," that it works. That more from the essay than the video, but still.

This is not, in strict point of fact, the case. Capitalism works because of simple things. I don't know how to make a pre-packaged, microwaveable, frozen chicken dinner; or the microwave; or for that matter how to generate the electrical power to operate the microwave in any event.

Doesn't stop me from buying them. Because I like chicken, despite working in a factory that - coincidentally to my point - makes, among other things, prepackaged, microwaveable, frozen chicken dinners. Because I work there, I DO pretty much know the procedures to go from "live chicken" to "frozen chicken marsala," but here's the thing.

I couldn't make a styrofoam tray, or a roll of shrinkwrap film, if I tried. I can understand the basic concepts behind it, but I have no idea how to actually put them into execution. Ok, to make a styrofoam tray, you simply use an air injector to blow a polymer foam into a mold to cool, so it sets in the right pattern.(*)

Now you show me EXACTLY how to do that, and for that matter, how to make polymer foam in the first place. Or an air injector. Or a cooling mold. Or...

...You take my point.

All this aside, I'm self-interested. Or, let's be right up front about it: I'm selfish. For some strange reason, when it's me or the world, "me" wins every time. I'm a human; we're designed that way. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as you understand how that's supposed to work.

Here's how it's supposed to work.

I like to eat Chicken Marsala for dinner, from time to time. It's not only tasty, but provides for the food for my family for that day. However, raising chickens takes time, and frankly if I were to raise as much chicken as I like to eat, I wouldn't be able to do anything else, which I suppose is fine if you're a single, childless chicken farmer, but kind of sucks for everyone else.

So, I'd rather buy it than grow it. Since I love spending time doing things other than living in the kitchen, I'd also rather buy it ready-to-heat, rather than butcher the chicken myself, pluck it, gut it, clean it, and debone it, all before beginning to prepare the actual meal. While making things from scratch is fun from time to time, again, I have other things to occupy my time, and thus cooking per se is relegated to the status of an occasional thing "for variety."

Since I'd rather buy it than grow it, I have to use money. I get money by trading an acceptable portion of my time and effort to someone else; for a brief period every week, I do what they tell me to, in exchange for cash, which I can then exchange for damn near anything I want.

Now, I'm specialized; I debone chickens, the whole time I'm at work. Other folks operate machines, clean up, pluck feathers, et cetera. And somewhere along the line, someone grows chickens. And the feed for chickens. And makes henhouses. And cuts down the trees for the wood to make henhouses...

Millions of people are involved not only in the manufacture of pencils, as in the Friedman video above, but also in the manufacture of your frozen, microwaveable chicken Marsala. Those people get along becasue each of them is sufficiently selfish to want time to themselves, to do whatever they want. Each of those people therefore trades a portion of their time and effort to someone else, allowing them to specialize in one thing, rather than devoting their time to the endless minutiae of manufacture from start to finish; resulting in, eventually, chicken Marsala, electrical power, and my family being able to eat dinner for the princely sum of maybe $6 - well less than an hour's worth of my time.

THIS is why capitalism works; it relies on each person's inherent self-interest to drive the process, and therefore - being based on reality - works.

Communism, on the other hand, fails for two reasons: first, armed robbery is wrong, even if it's the government doing it, and second, because it assumes that people AREN'T selfish, which is just plain stupid.


(*) This is a hoary old joke; the Elephant Stew recipe. "First, dice one elephant..."