5 Reasons Millennials Should Support ‘Capitalism’

Carter does a nice job—though I’d say not as thorough as the subject might demand—pointing out why free markets are a good thing. He might have spent a bit more time pointing out that what we have today is not free markets, but rather is fairly heavily regulated and mercantilistic, but how do you do that in a short column?

I found his portion on defining the term “capitalism” especially helpful… for understanding a bit better why there seems to be so much confusion and/or hostility from unlikely sources. Sometimes folks are just not talking about the same thing at all while they’re debating the pros and cons of “capitalism.”

I’ve discovered that to some, the term only correctly applies to large scale banking-based economies. So they promptly assert that the Bible in no way commends or even accommodates “capitalism” in any special way.

But the term has long been used far more flexibly and, as Carter pointed out, we don’t really have a better term for the idea of freedom-based commerce vs. centralized/government owned/government-directed commerce. Even “free market” falls short because people tend to assume “free” means “free to be dishonest and cheat people.” The opposite is true. The market is only free to the extent that people are empowered by accurate information to make trades they are confident will be honored.

So where there is cheating, robbing, looting… there is no free market. (Just as there is no free market when the government is micromanaging it from some far away administrative power center.)