Socialism is more popular than Capitalism on Medium

The other day I went to Starbucks and I saw a kid (about 22 years old, I am in my 40s) ordering a Caramel Machiato without whip cream. When he received it, it had whip cream. He got upset and made a big deal about it. He started to yell and asked to get a new beverage, not simply to remove the cream from the one he got. The server immediately apologized and proceed to prepare a new beverage for the upset client.

It got me thinking how lucky that kid really is. The biggest problem he is facing is having his cream removed from a $6 coffee. That my friends is progress. We have become so soft as a society that we don’t really get to think what we have built and how much we have progressed in the past hundred years.

I am an economist and of course I tend to read more articles about economics not only in Medium but everywhere. And it saddens me how popular socialism is these days.

Every day there are dozens of popular influencers writing about how bad capitalism is and how terrible things are. It is also noticeable how statistically poor most of those comments are. Their main argument goes on average like this:

• Capitalism is killing us.
• Corporate America is bad.
• Laissez-faire thoughts and free trade are unfair and unethical.
• We need to find ways to have the economy working for “everybody”.

They fail to take into account how poor and pathetic centrally planned countries live. I rarely read an article about how great Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea live. Or about how millions of people vote with their presence by moving out of centrally planned societies into free countries.

All statistic data show that countries with higher degrees of freedom achieve higher degrees of economic prosperity, less poverty and higher living standards.

No, they will never attack capitalism with data and results. They cannot win that argument. They attack it with finding enemies in businesses and collectivist principles that do sound very nice in theory but in practice they simply do not work.

A lot of these influencers write articles from MacBooks and iPhones. I wonder if they get to think how reduced socialist countries choices are, or if they would like their freedom to possess and acquire these items removed.

They forget what capitalism really is: freedom. Freedom to work anywhere you want, to buy anything you want, to pray for any God you want, to make love and businesses with anyone you want. Your will to exchange your time and money for these things is what makes capitalism the best system we have ever seen.

I don’t really care about the big corporations. I am sure they will do everything they can to get my business. I don’t care about Republicans and I don’t care about Democrats. They both want the same thing: accumulate power. None of these politicians are true liberals. They want more government control.

All I am attempting to create here is more critical thought. If you are going to attack capitalism at least get your facts straight. And don’t buy into collectivism in automatic.

Read, analyze, compare and get your own conclusions. And if you want your coffee without cream, demand it. You made a choice, you paid a price and you voted… with your money.