Prager U and Propaganda

Prager U just put out an advertisement that said:

Why is capitalism so often criticized, yet so rarely explained clearly?If free markets have shaped so much of modern life, shouldn’t we understand how they actually work?

Let me explain the contradictions here. The word “capitalism” wasn’t coined until about the mid 19th century. That would mean that our true establishment by guys like Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams, Madison, Hamilton, etc., had little to no concept of the word capitalism when they framed our first American system, a federal republic. They certainly knew what freedom and a free market was even though they may have fallen short extending the same free system to some people.

Truly, in the first system there was never a pure “free market.” There were tariffs, and other laws that helped establish industry and public service, and rightly so. But when capitalism was burgeoning, the new establishment that would come out of the ashes of the Civil War was a national republic. In 1863 the national banking system was established and would prevail in getting control of the money system. Chattel slavery was supplanted by a kinder, gentler America where political slavery and bondage were on the rise. Influential senator John Sherman had said of the system that [Americans will now take notice of their government].

Clearly this was the beginning of a heavier hand in command capitalism in opposition to the much taught and touted “invisible hand” of the free market attributed to Adam Smith. Bonds became the basis for currency and contractions of other forms of money helped defunct thousands of people, businesses, and entrepreneurs in a move toward consolidated capital that is still in motion. Another man at this time who helped usher in this new system, Abraham Lincoln, conceded years before John Sherman that of land/resources, labor, and capital, the three pillars of capitalism, labor was prior to the other two.

The authoritative spirit of modern capitalism cannot be put on a par with free markets. Whether you agree or disagree with current policy, the current establishment (a misnomer) – a global empire since WW II - cannot be put on a par with our original establishment. The fact that a foreign official, Klaus Schwab, founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum had declared a “global reset” proves the point of control. Command capitalism agitates the free world. The result is poor responses in political systems like democratic socialism and communism where even more impositions may be applied to the productive class.

Experience has shown, it’s much easier to be a shareholder than a laborer. Command economics, in this case command capitalism and its accomplices (monetary inflation and monopoly/oligopoly), have not only created a greater imbalance between the shareholder and the laborer, but they have also contradicted true production, the result of which decreases prices and the cost of living that benefits entire societies over all classes. But their arrogance does not stop there. They have the temerity to not only discourage the dignity of labor (about which many Popes have written), but to defame those who labor as anarchists, socialists, communists, and worse.

So, when you are helping the propaganda machine that Dennis Prager, Dave Ramsey, and so many others exhort from on high, keep in mind that these are the same people who do not fully explain what capitalism is, or at least today’s version of it.

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