I recently watched an episode of the popular sci-fi comedy, Doctor Who, and was disappointed, though not surprised to find an episode taking a number of shots at “Capitalism.” While Doctor Who is one of my favorite shows of all time, it’s known for it’s tendency to push moments of Progressive preaching at the audience.
In modern, Western society, it is in vogue to decry the evils of “Capitalism,” but most people do not know what Capitalism is, and confuse it with a different political-economic system known as “Corporatism.” This is only one piece of evident confusion in this particular episode.
For the sake of simplicity, I will attempt to summarize the episode and it’s claims.
The Doctor and his companions arrive on an abandoned space station. They find that the space suits have been killing the miners on board, and the suits have started chasing after the remaining crew, corpse and all, giving a zombie-esch feel to it. Along with zombie-feel, I had a few flashbacks to a Library ;)
The main characters also find out that oxygen on this station costs money, and are informed by a computer that any unauthorized oxygen will be “expelled” to protect prices. The idea is that evil corporations are selling oxygen to consumers, and if you are unwilling or unable to pay, they will steal the oxygen you have and vent it into space.
The episode later proceeds to inform the audience that the company’s intent is to send the suits to kill the crew, and to replace them with a more efficient crew. The Doctor then saves the day by rigging the ship to explode should the remaining characters die, thus making them more expensive to kill than to keep alive.
This is all mixed in with pot-shots about corporations stepping on the little guy, and corporations ruling and oppressing people in a space-faring society, until we are informed of an uprising against the corproations six months later, and a new “mission” for humanity. (The episode coyly says nothing about Socialism or Communism, but more about that later.)
The Problems
The first problem is that the episode’s writer evidently misunderstands what Capitalism is. In brief, Capitalism means the same thing as free markets, meaning people are free to buy and sell as they please. No one is forcing anything on anybody. If someone wants to sell their novel, or song recording, they can charge as much as they like to whomever they like, but others are also never forced to buy anything.
If a young mother in a third world country has a goat, she can sell the milk for any price she names, and others are free to accept, reject, or haggle. If the milk is not being sold for a price that both parties find agreeable, the government is not stepping in and forcing one party to take place in the transaction against their consent. It’s for this very reason that once government restrictions began to be lifted in India and China that both of these countries began to experience unprecedented economic growth.
Not only is Capitalism (aka a free market) the most effective system in the world, it is also the most moral. In a truly Capitalist economy, people are free, and when they are free, the standard of living for themselves, their families, and their countries can finally begin to climb the economic ladder.
But Doesn’t Capitalism Exploit the People? What about the poor?
We are often told that Capitalism exploits the poor, and that under a Capitalist system the “Rich” get richer, and the “Poor” get poorer. This sort of objection goes all the way back to Karl Marx, if not much further. Yet all of the empirical evidence collected over decades of research shows that this statement simply is not true. Not only are the Rich getting richer in capitalist nations, the poor are also getting richer!
Starvation-level poverty around the world has fallen by some 80% since 1970, thanks mostly to free market Capitalism.
Critics of “Capitalism” often make the economic fallacy of the fixed pie. They assume that the amount of wealth in the world is static, and unchanging. Under this assumption, the world’s resources are like a single large pie, but as the rich get a bigger piece of the pie, and as more people are born, there is not enough pie to go around. But it’s important to keep in mind that wealth is not fixed, and not to confuse wealth with money. Wealth is constantly being created and consumed. Farmers grow apples, and we eat them. Scientists generate data, and treat disease. 100 years ago, most people did not have cars, let alone a super computer in their pockets that had the ability to; contact friends, read books from an exponentially increasing library of knowledge, and analyze the human genome. Instead they were dying of diseases that have now been virtually or entirely eradicated. (Thank you vaccinations!)
As for overpopulation, a complete analysis is beyond the scope of this article. But it’s interesting to note that the most impoverished parts of the world are actually underpopulated — i.e. there aren’t enough people to do the work that needs to be done. Conversely, countries that used to be synonymous with extreme poverty, like India and China, are now rapidly growing economic superpowers. When I was growing up, it was assumed that these places were in poverty due to overpopulation. Amazingly their populations now are larger than ever, but their quality of life is rapidly improving, thanks to reduced government restrictions on the free market.
As for “sweat shops” and persecution of the poor, Yaron Brook explains that there are some key factors that we are sorely missing:
The Socialist Garden of Eden, and Capitalist “Sweatshops”
Far too often we are told that Capitalism “isn’t working.” Often this comes from people who major(ed) in Feminist Studies, or spent tens of thousands of dollars taking on another social-justice major, clearly unconcerned about their financial futures in this “evil” Capitalist empire. Well, hey, someone has to serve us a $7 coffee, while scrolling on their iPhone to buy a new Che Guevara shirt with their next light roasted paycheck.
World-famous economist, Dr. Thomas Sowell has pointed out something very interesting. He points out that when people attack Capitalism, and point out it’s imperfections, they are expecting a system that has no scarcity at all. But he points out that we are not living in the Garden of Eden, meaning that we live in a world where scarcity exists.
Adding to Dr. Sowell’s sentiment, to expect that we would just wake up in a Socialist Edenic Utopia were it not for some greedy Capitalist overlords is not only absurd, and irrational but ignorant as well. We live in the most prosperous society in human history, thanks to the free market (“we” being those of us in the developed world). The thing that has to be explained in the world is not poverty — humans have always been poor as the default, what needs to be explained is the existence of wealth.
When we compare Capitalism to Communism and Socialism, we see that historically the later have only lead to death and starvation, along with the murder of over 100 million people — the worst human rights violations in the history of the world.
On the other hand, Capitalism doesn’t make nations rich overnight, but what it does do is give people the chance to climb the economic ladder. That’s why in South Korea, they started out dirt poor, however as Yaron Brook points out, when Capitalism was brought in, they were able to rapidly accumulate wealth, and within 70 years, they were able to achieve a similar quality of life to people in the West — something that took us hundreds of years to accomplish!
Those “sweat shops” may start out in a terrible state by our standards (though the “sweatshop” worker may be in a palace compared to his neighbor), but within 10 years, the job skills obtained mean that companies have to compete for workers, and the difference becomes a difference between digging through trash piles without capitalism, and being able to live in a house and send your kids to school with capitalism.
That “sweatshop” worker might be in line for low-paying jobs today, but ten years later, jobs from multinational corporations are in line for that now experienced worker! That is the reality.
We might not like to see children working in factories, but that factory is giving that child worker the chance to live, and is educating him in much needed job skills.
That child in the third world might not be able to read or write today, and he might only be getting $2 a day right now, but as the years go by he will gain skill, and wealth, and one day he will be able to buy a house and have a family, instead of starving to death in a trash pile.
That “sweatshop” means the difference between dying on the street, and having a job and an education. That worker might be illiterate and making $2 a day right now, but do not be surprised if his kids end up going to college and sitting next to your kids!
We might wish to see that kid making Western wages right now, but that is simply not possible. If companies were to pay him that now, given his skills and abilities, they would go out of business tomorrow. Instead the only way to help him is by allowing the free market to grow and bear fruit. An apple tree does not grow in a day, and neither does an economy, but if tended by the farmer or the capitalist, both will grow!
If someone is chained to the assembly line, then that is evil, but it is not Capitalism. But that is not what is happening in the factories that we object to. What is happening is that people in abject poverty are finding a better means to make a living than what they had before. They are choosing by their own free will to work in these places, and as a result, their lives improve.
Do I have my concerns? Of course I do. Even if workers are not paid a lot, I still want to see facilities that are reasonably safe (fire exits, etc.), but what we as Westerners need to be careful not to do is to demand so much so fast that we end up pricing third-world workers out of a job. After all, it is well known to economists that workers in developing countries are often not as productive as well-trained workers in the West, and thus are not able to create as much wealth to trade for their paychecks.
Is the system perfect? No, it isn’t the Garden of Eden, but last we heard, that gate is not available to us.
Pointing to imperfections in the system that works the best, and values individual rights, is no reason to replace this imperfect system with one that has only ever brought about abject failure, and the worst violation of human rights in the history of the world.
Doctor Who VS Rational Self-Interest, and Basic Common Sense
It should go without saying that the entire premise of this show makes absolutely no sense. Providing people in space with oxygen would not be expensive. Killing off employees who could not pay their oxygen bill would be horribly expensive, and would distract from their goal! A capitalist who is seeking his own self-interest, however indifferent he may be to the well-being of other people, would simply factor an oxygen scrubber of some form into the structure of the space station. He would then let his employees focus on their jobs.
Also, these employees were supposedly mining copper, and they said that one would have to steal a mountain of copper to make a robbery profitable. But that would imply that there isn’t much scarcity of copper in whatever market these miners are sending their product to in the first place! So where are they mining the copper from? Perhaps I missed a planet or asteroid that I was supposed to see?
Not only does the premise of the business endeavor make no sense, the premise for killing off the employees makes no sense either. As any “greedy” capitalist would immediately recognize, if even so much as a rumor got out that people were dying or disappearing from your company, it would destroy your reputation with potential employees, and destroy your public reputation. Even a rich Capitalist can’t just do whatever he wants and still make money, he can’t fly above the laws of economics in a free market.
Now, perhaps he is an irrational being ruling over others? Sure! Why not? But if that is the case, it is hardly an indictment against Capitalism. Such an incompetent company will inevitably fail, which is one of the strong points of Capitalism: If others are not willing to give you their money by their own free will, then you will simply go out of business. If you are not creating something that others want or need, then people will take their money elsewhere. And if you are abusing your workers, and playing stupid games with their oxygen, your best potential employees will pursue every alternative to pass you over.
Final Thoughts and Conclusions
While I love Doctor Who, and will continue to be an avid fan of the franchise, I thought this was a good opportunity to correct some basic misunderstandings about basic economics. I am sure the writers and producers of the show had the best intent, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
It’s easy to criticize Capitalism from the platform of a fantasy world. After all, anyone can criticize anything, and as my Organic Chemistry professor’s Organic Chemistry professor used to say “The only ones who never fail are the ones who never do anything.” But to parasphrase a sentiment from Thomas Sowell, we are not God at the beginning of Creation, and we do not have access to the Garden of Eden. We are limited to what is and is not physically possible in our present reality. The government can’t waive a magic wand to end poverty, that option simply is not available to us. All we can go by are the limited options that are available to us.
In fact, the Welfare State has been an abysmal failure, overwhelmingly creating more poverty. But free markets have created incredible wealth and prosperity.
I personally wish that I could end poverty overnight, but that is not an option available to us in the real world. But what I do find amazing, especially as a Christian, is that the one economic system that raises human beings to unprecedented prosperity, is also the one economic system by which human beings are free, rather than slaves of the government. There is a huge blessing when we realize that the world we woke up in is not a zero-sum-game, doing the best I can for myself through Capitalism turns out to be one and the same thing as doing the most I possibly can for others, especially the poor.
Author’s Note: Thank you for reading this article. As of the publishing of this piece, I am not sure how clear my ideas are going to come off to others. If there is a sentence that I could have been more clear on, please let me know so that I can clarify my position.
In this day and age, the Internet has become a place of irrational conversation. That said, I want this article to generate honest conversation where people will honestly disagree. Take the time to get to understand the mentality of others, and see where they are coming from, and let me know where you agree and where you disagree.
Ultimately, I am hoping that people will seek truth based on evidence, rather than based solely on ideas they’ve heard from one group of sources or another. Be sure to step outside the echo chamber for one hour a week, and hear the best intellectuals that other views have to offer.
