democratize capitalism
Capitalism is amazing. It’s the most under-appreciated element of the modern world.
Capitalism has been the force behind a miraculous amount of progress in the United States, and throughout the world.
First, it has lifted billions out of extreme poverty. Billions. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/132

It’s the only system that has ever done this. No other political or social system has been as effective at destroying extreme poverty. Ever.
Second, beyond its power to cut extreme poverty, capitalism is the only empirically-validated way to increase the wealth of the people.
It turns out that rewarding competence, gives you more competence, as well as an ever-growing offering of useful inventions, gadgets, companies, and systems.
At the extreme ends, it gives society one-click shopping for basically anything ever invented (through Amazon), and an extreme reward of billions of dollars to Jeff Bezos, and others who took the risk to build that system.
At the local level, it gives you things like a plumping system that works, and that makes a local plumber/owner very comfortable (totally doable for a local plumbing business to make its owner $600,000+ a year).
Capitalism changes everything.
It, for example, revolutionized (and not in the Marx-inspired Mao way, where millions die) China, almost overnight.
A picture illustrates the revolution in China (Shanghai, 1990 vs 2010):

The transformation of the entire country has been dramatic. China went from a hell-hole where you couldn’t even find food (Marx-inspired Mao’s policies led to famines that killed millions between 1959–1961), to today, where China is a nation whose only real rival is the United States, in terms of wealth, power & prestige it enjoys on the world stage.
So, we should democratize capitalism, by doing the following:
- There’s no PR team for capitalism, but anti-freedom messages like Marxism & Socialism have large platforms — universities promote their messages, much of mainstream media promotes their messages. We need to get the message out that capitalism is amazing. We need to democratize the ideas of capitalism. Capitalism is not scary or evil. It is the unleashing of human potential, multiplied by millions and billions of humans. Capitalism is your freedom to sell your talents, inventions, insights, and products, to others. It creates every convenience, every product, book, meal, and house you’ve ever enjoyed. Most young people attend universities that are dominated by thinking from Marx & other post-modernists whose ideas are toxic. They teach ideas which are scientifically & empirically shown not to work. These young people, without background knowledge or understanding, eat this stuff up. We need to take back the education of the people, before we wake up to a world where we take the picture above from China and reverse it.
- Non-wealthy people can’t invest in many of the things that wealthy people can. We need to make it easier for normal people to participate in the investment side of large-scale capitalism. Current SEC laws make it so that only wealthy people can participate in certain investments: investing in startups, certain commercial real estate, certain alternative assets, all illegal unless you’re already rich. This, by definition, is the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer — but codified into law. Now, these investments aren’t without risk! Startups especially are an insanely risky asset class. But do we need the government to “keep us safe” here? If you are smart, and a little lucky, you could make life-changing money by finding promising startups when they’re young and investing small amounts. If platforms like AngelList were available to non-wealthy people, you could rely on smart on-the-ground investors to do diligence for you — like a mutual fund for startups.
- Zoning laws have the potential to hurt cottage-industry capitalism. We should re-think zoning laws that restrict at-home businesses, or the opportunity to rent out rooms of your home. These businesses can benefit the very poorest among us: at-home daycare businesses can change a family’s life; at-home hair-dressing businesses can bring in significant income; at-home boutique shops can be an amazing boon; renting out a room can be life-changing for a struggling family.
- Debt will always be with us, but it doesn’t have to be constantly hanging over society’s head. We should take a book out of ancient Israel, and forgive mortgages & consumer debts every 50 years. Why? Capitalism requires capital! Unleash that capital in the form of debt forgiveness, and see miracles happen. Many entrepreneurs start out by leveraging their house or land, in order to start their businesses. Also, by clearing the books every 50 years, we’d smooth out the boom & bust cycle. This idea needs a bit more room to explore than this post allows for, but essentially, people massively defaulting on loans creates unexpected shocks throughout society that lead to huge downturns in the economy. Many of our country’s depressions & recessions are caused, or sparked, by waves of loan defaults. If, instead, we pre-planned these defaults, banks could plan for them and create systems to deal with them, thus smoothing out their impacts.
- Capitalism requires sound money; money that can’t be devalued by the government through inflation (i.e. nearly invisible taxes). We need to force a re-emergence of sound money. The founding fathers wrote & talked at length about this: they suggested commodity-based money, that kept purchasing power intact by tying money to gold and silver. Over the generations, Americans have sort-of forgotten this. It’s a very esoteric topic that can seem boring & it’s sometimes hard to see how it impacts you. But, if we had sound money, citizens would have much more wealth than they currently do. We’d also avoid many of our wars — wars are often financed by inflation (the hidden tax) to avoid people immediately feeling the economic consequences of financing the war machine.
- Onerous regulation is holding back innovation & development in pharmaceuticals, bio-technology & cancer research, human anti-aging research, autonomous driving technology, and many other areas. We ought to create economic freedom-zones across the country: pockets where certain new technologies are completely unrestricted, and where returns on investments in these new technologies is untaxed. You might make self-driving cars completely free in Michigan. Perhaps drones are free in Nevada, new drug development completely free in Ohio, and on and on. There would be risks to doing this! People might get hurt; they might die even as they develop new technologies. But the freedom to create with these technologies is what unleashes human potential, creativity, and wealth for the people. Take the risks! Setup these economic freedom zones! And then watch miracles happen.
