"Weirdly, my attack is not complicated and does need lots of words and theory."

This is sort of an odd point to make after rambling on about Voltaire and True Detective. Have you ever considered working with an editor?

Nobody-- at least not Pinker nor Gates--is advocating for capitalism in its naked form, Charles.

First, Capitalism has no "natural form," no Platonic ideal. This was Marx's greatest error. Capitalism is a rationalization, and a partial one at best. It is not a system, it is not even a complete or coherent ideology. It is certainly not the abstract clockwork mechanism proposed by Marx.

Second, the ancestors of these rich white men, if we go back far enough, were almost certainly slaves at some point. The history (and prehistory) of northern Europe was rather nasty for a very, very long time.

Third, The Wealth of Nations does not present any new philosophical theory; rather, it merely applies the theory developed in Smith's most important work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, to the world Smith saw around him at the time. The Wealth of Nations is an exegesis; it is an apologia.

Comparing Microsoft with a 19th century sugar plantation hell hole in Surinam, and offering an 18th century French satirical novel on suffering as evidence, may be the worst argument for Marxism ever offered.

Charles: "People of their ilk"

I've always found that people how use this phrase are prone to stereotypes and bigotry.

Capitalism is just a system, a machine. Outcomes depend on what you feed into it. The purpose of government is to make sure that what goes in gives the best result for the governed. Government is failing. The weak point of capitalism is human nature. Some times human nature leads to a “good” decision like Henry Ford realizing that if he pays his workers enough to buy a car the market grows and there is net good. Most of the time you get the trash decisions of Walmart. Capitalism didn’t create public education, build the interstate highway system or create a safer world after WWII. It just benefitted from it. It is a part of our life; a part that is to be governed, not govern.

The premise of this article is invalid before readers can even get passed the title.

Steven Pinker is Jewish. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker#Biography) The most commonly known reference to the enslavement of the Jewish people is likely The Bible. A little searching will likely turn up any number of other instances and other atrocities. The Spanish Inquisition comes to mind. And while I can't say if any of his family were directly effected, there are still Jews alive today that were slaves in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s.

Please take the time to do at least some research before you publish op-ed articles. If nothing else, having the most basic of facts correct will add significant weight to your arguments.

Opps. Left out the word 'suggested' in my first sentence.

The suggested premise of this article is invalid before readers can even get passed the title.

i would argue that the case of the 18th century sugar plantation hellhole (nice phrasing above) is closer to pure socialism/marxist communism than capitalist. its the forced labor by a ruling minority, where the spoils and profits of the labor enterprise don’t go to the workers and the rulers get to decide what are if any the material rewards and rights of choice of the workers. I can’t believe just because the glassy critique of capitalism “doing anything for rhe almighty dollar” is used when once slaves and other non-nobles gradually got access to fair personhood and protections of the rule of law and access to use of the courts for claims. compare that to The Lives of Others, or plantation slavery. I think the images of communist USSR, maoist china, east germany have more in common in a practical sense than Suriname slavery being juxtaposed with walking up to an ugly-ass bank if america atm and pulling out some capital that you earned however the fuck you wanted to, to go buy whatever you want. I think an idea was obliterated but it wasn’t pinkers. now if you wanted to
make the argument that, like slavery, our current system has many aspects of a cartel, then yeah i dig the reference to suriname. it’s all tee’d up for someone to call this out as a “white” (avatar at least) guy debating a “black” guy about slavery. epistemologically though, do we not all have the right to debate a metaphor when someone is using an apple to describe an orange (which is a fair way to illustrate the idea if no oranges are around.)

@3: You have to keep in mind that to people like Charles, the only slavery that ever happened was when white Americans invented slavery, sailed to Africa, stole slaves, and sailed back. This is the only slavery that ever existed, because this is the only slavery/racial exploitation that helps them maintain certain narratives.

Also, he really knows nothing about economics, or history, but that is a tale for another time.

Exploiting workers presumes that all workers are equally capable and that there is an endless supply of workers and that there is no competition that treats workers better elsewhere.

There is a finite number of workers. Every one is differently suited to work in different industry. As long there is competition, every worker is free to pursue work that they find most beneficial to themselves. This increased specialization allows for goods and services to improve at staggering rate over time, while the work conditions improve as primary way of businesses to attract the best and most competent workers to work for them. No politicking and advocating needed.

The only exception are the lowest of the low end jobs that are increasingly taken over by robots and AI. This presents a new challenge for the upcoming decades, but a good solution will surely not involve be government intervention and coercion.

This coercion by force and violence backed imprisonment is what you actually object in your piece, without even realizing it. Only government can come in, take the fruits of your labor and throw you in jail for not respecting it. Sure, the government has proven slightly retarded thus far, with a blooming bureaucracy and 20 trillion dollars to show for it, but any day now it's about to shine brightly. It just needs a little more time.

Back to capitalism. You can treat workers poorly only in a very narrow slice of time before mass protection raises standards so much that even the beggars on the street are better clothed and fed than kings from ages past. Now every human in the industrialized and organized nation is free to educate themselves and rise to their full potential.

Only few competent and brave enough opt to start a new business. Even so, 90% of business fail. Those who choose to exploit workers, fail first as workers just opt to work in a better business across the street.

A couple of things:

1) If someone is coming to an unpleasant or dangerous job voluntarily, then that means no matter how bad the job is, the alternative is presumably worse. It sucks that there aren't better alternatives, but the employer isn't responsible for that situation, and the employer must be, at least to some small degree, making their lives better.

That's why there's no comparison to the character in "Candide" who said "If you try to run away, they cut off your leg" (slavery) versus the character in True Detective with the missing finger joints -- the latter was presumably paid enough money that he figured it was worth it to keep coming back. It's the kind of comparison you'd only make if you just consider superficial appearances without actually thinking about what's going on.

2) Mudede says at the end, "The progress (higher living standards and so on) that Pinker and Gates attribute to the spirit of capitalism is actually a consequence of anti-capitalist movements." But Pinker says in Enlightenment Now that the highest standard of living is in countries with free-market capitalism and a generous social welfare state (the latter having been achieved through what Mudede presumably calls "anti-capitalist movements"). Mudede is agreeing with Pinker and he doesn't even know it.

"Billionaires" are evidence that 'capitalism' as it is practiced in the USA today is broken.
Conveniently, as with the entirety of human social history, the system is 'broken' in favor of the inordinately wealthy.
How these bozos convince you pheasants that they are 'doing good' is beyond normal logic.

You can treat workers poorly only in a very narrow slice of time before mass protection raises standards so much that even the beggars on the street are better clothed and fed than kings from ages past.

Bullshit. You don't have to go back very far to see clear examples of where people were kept in poverty for generations while owners profited. The only thing that broke it was hard fought regulations (ending Jim Crow, breaking up trusts, the right to organize, etc.).

Now every human in the industrialized and organized nation is free to educate themselves and rise to their full potential.

Again, total bullshit. Parental wealth is a greater predictor of future wealth then academic achievement. An 'A' student born to a poor family will make less money as an adult than a 'B' student born to a wealthy one -- even if they go to the same college. At least that is the case in America (I don't know about other countries). Trump is not an aberration. He is obviously not that smart, yet he enjoys great wealth because his daddy earned a lot of money. The only reason this country comes even close to being equitable is because of the hard fought restrictions on capitalism people fought for years ago (as Charles said). Safe working conditions, limited work hours, a living wage -- all of that did not evolve naturally (as a result of capitalism's progression). Neither did anti-trust legislation. Neither did the clear elements of socialism in the U. S. (a country that sits to the right of just about every industrialized country). Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps and public education are socialist by nature. They are key elements of a mixed economy -- an economy that was once the envy of the world. All of these elements helped create the greatest middle class in the world.

But now, of course, extreme right wing Republicans have managed to chip away at all of these. The results are as expected. The middle class has shrunk, and lower income classes are worse off, and have less opportunity.

Capitalism is a rationalization, and a partial one at best. It is not a system, it is not even a complete or coherent ideology.

No, but there are plenty of people who believe that unfettered capitalism represents an ideal economy, and in turn, the government should do all it can to produce that. Since 1980, the Republican Party has been controlled by those who favor that philosophy. No labor unions, no worker rights, no Social Security, no government health care -- ideas that would have been considered radical and extreme a generation ago are considered mainstream within the most powerful political party in the nation.

Wow, The Stranger's comment system makes it really hard to quote anything. You can't use HTML anymore, so you can't put things in italics. I tried putting two greater than symbols, but apparently those get stripped as well.

Chuck's ancestors were not slaves,
does he think Capitalism is keen?

@13 bennetthaselton,
Indeed you're correct. I read "Enlightenment Now" by Steve Pinker. It is an outstanding book. Agree, "the highest standard of living is in countries with free-market capitalism AND (my emphasis) a generous social welfare state".

I believe a reasonable comparison would be the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa nearly 30 years ago. Some (specifically activists) called for 'divestiture' vs. while others also against apartheid were against divestiture because they believed it actually harmed black South Africans. The latter (largely the Reagan/H. W. Bush administrations) wanted 'constructive engagement'.

I believe BOTH were responsible for dismantling that terrible system.

its nice to ride a wave of logic - i see a few others getting into the coercion/choice aspect of slavery as compared to capitalist or (real, not democratic) socialist.

as far as billionaires being the proof of a sick system, it’s more that they are the lucky winners of the scalability variable in their work product. pinkers example i. his great “inequality” chapter of enlightenment now is of JK rowling, and her mass of near a billion dollars from all the hundred millions of books sold and movies paid for. she made that pile of money from scaling to get her material to that many people. are you arguing that the world is not better off for rowling having had such an impact on peoples movie watching and boom reading time worldwide? thats essentially how billions are normally made, outside of the abnormal derivative billions made from the weird cancer growing on normal capitalism which could be described as financialization. (i hammered out my last little comment last night after some serious weed smoking at the late but legendary nightmares on wax show. check his rad party mixes on soundcloud.).

Great point, Charles!

Good book on how it's all been downhill since Eurasian settlements developed:

https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States-ebook/dp/B0747RTP2W/

21 - yeah but think of all the free time we have not being subsistence day-to-day "in the moment" and not losing babies, family and friends at random intervals to random deaths. also I hated the lesser of two evils argument of why to elect hillary, but I guess I like it when we are comparing this system to a USSR or maoist even cuban alternative. YEAH BUTT!

A country with millions of incarcerated people and as warmongering as this corporate entity is -the USA- is not a healthy system. Or whatever you want to call it. Capitalism is based on exploitation. Resources and labor. By any means necessary. Millions here in this country live in poverty and it is not their choice.

There are approximately 30 million known slaves in this planet right now and that is not counting the near slaves here and now. Billionaires are damaging our environment and future by their never ending greed. There are people sleeping on the streets while others sleep in untold luxury. Most wealthy inherited it and because JK Rowling became rich is not a reason to justify this incredible hoarding and blatant poverty. Pinker and Gates have a platform and they are liars. Millions don’t have a platform and their voices are generally unheard.

For many years people have been fighting their overlords or bosses for a better life. If you study labor history for example you will find that many lives were lost in these struggles and nothing was given to people by those in charge of the means of production. The labor movement in the 1930s is one prime example. The struggle continues.

Thank you Charles for your article.

Capitalism is a curse not a blessing because the ruthless pursuit of profit is killing.

If people have to work three jobs or one job in order to survive then they are not free, If people have no say or little say in their working conditions and environment they are not free. To tell them to get another job shows lack of understanding of what that entails. Most people are not allowed one mistake but the wealthy like Trump can often keep making them. That is a Plutocracy.

Without self determination we are not free.

26 Good point Ken. Yes not just capitalism but authoritarianism, inequality and oligarchy which can be in other systems but is certainly in capitalism. Because someone is wealthy they are not better than the poorest people. But this system glorifies the wealthy and oppresses the poor and silences them. It works for the wealthy.

22 We are losing many to random deaths due to the overdose deaths of addicts on the streets and elsewhere. It is an international and national crisis. Check it out.

“Steven Pinker and Bill Gates Believe Capitalism Is a Blessing to Humankind Because Their Ancestors Were Not Slaves”

Maybe not, but then, neither were yours, were they chuck? Seems more likely yours were selling other, less fortunate, tribes into slavery....