Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Capitalism v The Free Market

Economic Liberty Lecture Series: Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation on Vimeo.



Bryan Caplan responds:

If Sheldon were merely saying that libertarians' noun of choice should be "the free market," rather than "capitalism," he'd have a decent case. But for libertarians to reject "capitalism" as an alternate noun is overly defensive - and to announce that we "oppose capitalism" is completely confusing.

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Stephan Kinsella responds:

I have myself for years now preferred the term anarcho-libertarian instead of anarcho-capitalist, mostly because libertarianism is about more than just free markets. But to the extent capitalism means the private ownership of the means of production–and I think this is a defensible meaning still–it is of course libertarian. We can expect any advanced libertarian society to be “capitalist” in that it would have an industrial, productive economy where the means of production is privately owned, characterized by the division and specialization of labor.

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