The Case for Legalizing Capitalism by Kel Kelly

Author:Kel Kelly [Kelly, Kel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute
Published: 2011-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

Source: Pictures from the Mercati e Foro di Traiano museum, Rome, Italy

Figure 6.2: Rome both in her glory days and after her fall.

At the end of the empire, there was no trade, no construction, no building of anything. There was only subsistence farming. There was also no money left with which to pay the army. Because of declining funding, the empire had been shrinking for 200 years.

Though the Roman state had defended itself from invaders for centuries, its ability to do so was reduced as time passed and the empire lost economic strength. The invaders had not become stronger; the empire had become weaker. Though the fall of the empire is a major event in the history books, it was rather anti-climactic at the time, as the way of life of most Romans had already been reduced to nothingness. In fact, many citizens welcomed the barbarians because they removed the source of oppressive taxation. There was nothing for the barbarians to steal or to control — all wealth and civilization was already destroyed. Figure 6.2 gives an idea of Rome’s development during the existence of capitalism and then after.

Both the Great Depression and the decline of the Roman Empire were results of the state’s intervening in the private marketplace and its seeking of power and control. But for the most part, in both cases, individual citizens had no way of knowing that their problems were caused by the very entity they relied on to solve their problems. Most people don’t understand that if there is a lack of production of goods or a lack of increasing real wages it is because government is preventing progress by taxing, regulating, or otherwise confiscating capital. Most people do not see that if there are some people (or many) unemployed, even though there is always more work to be done than there are people to do it, it can only be that something is preventing workers from being hired. And as is the case currently, citizens don’t see that the economy and the financial system cannot just collapse on their own, but that the collapse is the result of government manipulation of the marketplace.

As should be understood from these historical examples, government’s intervention on behalf of those supposedly underprivileged or exploited workers and consumers results in diminishing, not enhancing, the standard of living of these groups. This will be even clearer in the following section on communism.

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