Saturday Learning Series - Defending Capitalism (Part 2)

Individual rights depend on a free society.  As we saw last week, capitalism is a moral system. It is also an enabler of individual rights. The American governmental system is supposed to be an enabler of freedom and individual rights.

Ayn Rand explains:

Rand continues:

Ayn Rand was an atheist. But that does not mean her objectivist views on liberty and morality are incompatible with Christian belief. Certainly if Friedman's assertions are correct that capitalism provides the most benefits to the most people, then self-interest also serves altruistic purposes the most effectively.  The Christian tenets of self-sacrifice can be viewed through a different lens; the sacrifice of your own time to create value, and therefore wealth for yourself, also serves a greater good.  

Furthermore, if individual liberty is important for capitalism, it is also important for Christianity.  From a Christian perspective, God gave humanity free will.  Part of the reason for that free will no doubt was to allow humanity to come to God, not by force but by choice.

When you abdicate choices (i.e. your free will) to the government, you are abdicating your decision making process.  I've argued in the past that in that case you are abdicating your altruism (charity) to a forced system and worse, you are forcing others to do the same. You are stealing away their free will along with abdicating your own.  The only alternative to free-market capitalism, is government control.

Government control also is anti-God because, as is discussed in the conversation that follows, you are replacing God with government:

Christianity further argues that you should follow the rules because it is the moral thing to do. It teaches that you should work hard as well (at least the Protestant work ethic used to do so).  These are foundational to capitalism working properly.  If people subvert the rules, capitalism is corrupted, and corrupt capitalism (e.g. hegemonic crony capitalism) is not capitalism.

To be continued.