I’m specifically talking about that American-style free market libertarianism (as opposed to say, libertarian socialism or even neoliberalism to an extent). It’s the ideology that says “the government shouldn’t be in the business of doing ______”. This notion that the most successful (hypothetical) economies are those that remove all regulations and restrictions, let business owners do their thing, keep taxes to a minimum, and keep the government limited to only the most basic functions like police, military, courts, and very limited infrastructure (so like, just roads and maybe rails and power lines, but the private sector should run the trains and power companies).
What China has done with its economy over the last 40 years clearly disproves these libertarian hopes and dreams that the free market is best and any state intervention is doomed to failure. This thought occurred to me when a libertarian family member asked why I wasn’t a libertarian, and because I didn’t want to really get into it with this person, I just let out “because China exists!” with a generous helping of derision. This person’s response was “well… but they’re aUtHoRiTaRiAn”, and clearly didn’t want to engage any more with me on it, and I was happy to oblige.
But I’ve been thinking about the implications of what I said since then. Looking objectively at what China has accomplished, it is inarguable that this could only be accomplished with heavy intervention by the state. Of course myself and everyone here knows that’s thanks to socialism, but even if you’re someone who thinks China is merely “state capitalist”… it strains credulity to think China could accomplish all it has and be on the trajectory it is now if it embraced free market libertarian capitalism and let “the market” decide all outcomes at every level.
I know it’s not just China, but the entire history of capitalism shows it’s needed heavy state intervention to keep things running. But highlighting China is I think useful just because it’s such a stark example that people can see with their own eyes right now. I especially enjoy how you can contrast present day China (the success of socialism) with Milei’s Argentina (the failure of libertarian economics).
As someone who built a company from the ground up in short time with little borrowed money (and the privilege of a sufficient credit score of course), it is one or more of the following three things:
I proved this through years long experimentation but it still only is anecdotal evidence. I bear firms who were 10 times my size through careful planning and smarr execution while they were sleeping, but I got beaten by someone who was a little less smart but really ruthless.
Since this is not an uncommon theme, I’ll just run with it and state that this always leads to centralization because people have different upbringings and therefore different abilities which will always lead to capital concentration. First, its the daring ones, then its the smart ones, then its the ruthless ones and then it is those with the most accumulated money.
So yes, libertarian capitalism wont work, ever.
If you think about it, the most efficient job possible is to rob people. These are my observations on my context, a grain merchant that robs it’s clients it’s always gonna outperform the “honest” merchant that buys the grain at market place. They have obviously much higher profit margins and end up growing at a faster pace than the “honest” ones, eventually the sly merchants end up establishing themselves as the big ones.
In the long run, this system just inevitably fails because the people that produce the actual commodities get pushed out of business unless they do their own robberies, likely to their own workers.
Exactly! The whole system is a scam.