Capitalism could be called consumerism (Sowell)
February 23rd, 2008 | Published in Consumerism, Economics, Quotes | 4 Comments
What is called “capitalism” might more accurately be called consumerism. It is the consumers who call the tune, and those capitalists who want to remain capitalists have to learn to dance to it. The twentieth century began with high hopes for replacing the competition of the marketplace by a more efficient and more humane economy, planned and controlled by government in the interests of the people. However, by the end of the century, all such efforts were so thoroughly discredited by their actual results in countries around the world that even communist nations abandoned central planning, while socialists governments in democratic countries began selling off government-run enterprises, whose chronic losses had been a heaven burden to the taxpayers.
Privatization was embraced as a principle by such conservative governments as those of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Britain and President Ronald Regan in the United States. But the most decisive evidence for the efficiency of the marketplace was that even socialist and communist government leaders who were philosophically opposed to capitalism turned back towards the free market after seeing what happens when industry and commerce operate without the guidance of prices, profits, and losses.
—Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics (3rd Edition, Basic Books, 2007), p. 178.
February 26th, 2008 at 7:18 am (#)
Josh, I have to ask: what do you make of this quote in light of your essay, Let the Consumer Beware?
–Eric
February 26th, 2008 at 9:18 am (#)
I think we have a responsibility to be responsible consumers. Everyone is a consumer in some way — there’s nothing inherently wrong with it — but we need to be responsible in our consumerism. Thankfully, when we are responsible companies must listen.
February 8th, 2009 at 2:08 am (#)
What over simplified rubbish.
It is 40 years after the Moon landing. We are supposed to believe that economists with PhDs haven’t the vaguest idea that planned obsolescence is going on. The laws of physics don’t change style year to year. What are we redesigning crapmobiles for?
There have been 200,000,000+ cars in the US since 1995. If each car lost $1.500 in depreciation per year that would come to $300,000,000,000 per year. When have you heard economists talk about Net Domestic Product? They only subtract the depreciation of CAPITAL GOODS. But when consumers buy more junk they add it to GDP and call it economic growth.
When have you heard economists suggest the accounting be mandatory in the schools? Double-entry accounting is 700 years old. Shouldn’t we all be able to do accounting with the computers we have now? Oh, nobody suggested we all know accounting. I guess it would not be capitalism then.
http://discussions.pbs.org/viewtopic.pbs?t=28529
psik
February 8th, 2009 at 2:10 am (#)
Consumerism is just one of the dumber variations of capitalism.