Thursday, October 27, 2011

"Occupy" protesters unaware of capitalism

It is clear to me that the "Occupy" protesters have no idea about the economic system of a free society, known as capitalism.  We most certainly do NOT have a free society in Canada - we have a mixed economy with about half of it controlled by government.  The logical outcome of such a system is that groups are encouraged or even required to lobby for government pull to achieve their ends.  Some of these groups will naturally be corporations led by people who choose to use the levers of government force to suppress competition. 

It is not freedom, competition or capitalism that is the problem we face, it is the intervention of government in the economy.  The solution is the separation of economy and state in the same way and for the same reasons as for separation of church and state.  If the ability of the state to use force against peaceful citizens and their corporations is removed, it would end what is known as corporatism or crony capitalism, which is really not capitalism at all but statism or collectivism.

Protester Nathalie Cote is quoted as saying "we need a revolution of the mind" and she is quite correct, but perhaps not in the way she intends.  Philosopher Ayn Rand stated long ago that what society needs do is have an intellectual revolution, to discover for the first time that capitalism (the system that protects individual rights) is the ideal system.  It has long been recognized as the system that creates the most wealth and well-being for society, but it has never been implemented and defended on moral grounds, and so it fell victim to collectivism and altruism.

I wrote an article about this at
http://www.orleansstar.ca/web-article/3495/Get-Politics-out-of-Corporations-and-Money

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