Capitalism isn't working?

Why isn't capitalism working? Maybe these street people should look at their "leaders" – and
each other. (AP photo/Chris Ison/PA Wire)

Perhaps the most visually telling message of our times to come out of the G20 summit meeting in London was a photo of a very large protest banner.

G20, of course, refers to the group of twenty ruling class leaders who are meeting to determine how best to use the world financial crisis they created to further their own goals of expanding and consolidating their power over everyone. They are supported in this by Marx-hugging street protesters who seem to actually believe that more government coercion is a good thing.

The largest banner in the photo declares, "Capitalism isn't working."

The first thought that comes to mind is “How would they know?” Have they ever actually seen any capitalism?

Sure, they know that little old Granny Gurtie down the street who hand knits Barbie clothes for little girls who can’t afford to buy the real stuff is a capitalist because she doesn’t accept laundered taxpayer loot from the government to run her little home business.

And there’s Jibreel Farhaan and his family with their three dry cleaning stores who are capitalists because they don’t accept laundered taxpayer loot from the government.

And the business owner who runs his small electric nose hair trimmer manufacturing plant is a capitalist because he doesn’t accept laundered taxpayer loot from the government.

And that’s just about it for capitalism.

What the barricade-manners don’t get is that capitalism is merely the name that economists give to the free trade of free people.

The reason capitalism isn’t working is that there are no free people any more.

Nobody kicking around in their rent-controlled subsidized welfarized medicarized federalized supervised governmentalized regulated lives today has lived in anything even remotely resembling a capitalist system.

For many long decades America’s primary economic philosophy could be characterized as 19th Century Mercantilism or Post WWII Mixed Economy or 20th Century Corporatism or 21st Century Corporate Welfare Stimulus Bailout Cronyism.

None of that is capitalism.

Government taxing and regulating and dictating to companies large and small who pass the crushing expense of government on to their customers isn't capitalism. Corporate magnates (maggots?) who donate to (bribe?) politicians in return for cozy regulations that guarantee their profits and drive out competition isn't capitalism.

Again, capitalism simply means free people freely trading with one another. That's all there is to it. Government and business working together always corrupt one another. For capitalism to actually “work” requires a complete separation of government and economy.

That’s not what the protesters want, of course. What they want is some form of total government, whether they call it socialism or Marxism of collectivism or welfarism or Progressivism or Greenism or whateverism.

Obama and his international control-obsessed cronies will happily fix the economy for them, in the same sense that non-government gangsters fix prizefights and basketball games.

Marx-huggers apparently see this as the beginning of their big Brave New World Wet Dream. Other banners in the photo proclaim, "democracy is an illusion" (as opposed to what, the illusion of socialism?) and "one currency one country" (not enough room on the bed sheet to add "one planet, one prison?")

Libertarians who actually understand the difference between capitalism and legalized government thugism correctly see the continued downward spiral of civilization.

Once the poor benighted banner-carriers finally figure out that what they should have been saying was “Government isn’t working” it’ll be too late. By then we’ll all be swirling down the same big toilet hole together.

Thanks for nothing, kids.