Communism fails, capitalism works (and cares better too)

The failures of Communism (everywhere it has been tried) are due to the fact it assumes wrongly about reality, morality, and human nature. Its failures are intrinsic. A free market, on the other hand, is premised on allowing consumers and entrepreneurs to make their own decisions. Its failures are the failures of the human beings it involves.

Economic freedom for a largely moral people leads to the explosion of wealth, innovation, and generosity. Economic freedoms outside a moral framework can lead to exploitation. Thus, instead of the totalizing control of a Communist framework, a free market leans on the state to provide legal protections and religious institutions to provide moral instruction.

Arthur Brooks, President Emeritus of The American Enterprise Institute and a professor at Harvard Business School, once said that he supports the free market because not because he cares about the rich, but because he cares about the poor. After decades of studying global poverty, he found that “four-fifths of starvation level world poverty has been eradicated since 1970. (National Post)” How did that happen? It wasn’t through additional federal aid, or by throwing money at a problem that fundamentally wasn’t a money problem.

Under capitalism, poverty is addressed through opportunity, innovation, and people benefiting from their hard work and expertise. Thomas Keller can charge more because he sources the best produce and meat, buys the best kitchen tools, pays the best chefs, and tosses in his own innovation and skill set. I’m not saying that he should charge what he does, or that people should pay what he asks. I’m just explaining why his work and product deserves more value than a Big Mac.

Imposing absolute financial equality, on the other hand, doesn’t lift anyone to ingenuity or wealth. Rather, it lowers everyone to the lowest common denominator, economically as well as in creativity and quality.

A free market works not because wealth is valued, but because labor is.

Jesus said we can’t serve both God and wealth, and that it’s more difficult for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus never said accumulating wealth itself is sinful. Exploitation of the poor is sinful. Looking to wealth for salvation and meaning is sinful. Failing to steward what we’ve been given and failing to care for those in need are sinful.

When these potential downfalls are mitigated or avoided, a free market inspires people to give more. According to data from The Philanthropy Roundtable (TPR), Americans give to charity at a rate seven times higher than continental Europeans. The top one percent of all earners in the U.S. give a full one-third of all charitable donations.

--  John Stonestreet with Maria Baer