Many of the modern occupy movement’s criticisms of
capitalism are echoes of those leveled against the free market from the
earliest days of industrialization. Critics of capitalism point at the failures
of the free market in the early 20th century and the abuses that
occurred then, and thus conclude that capitalism is inherently flawed and that
the free market doesn’t work. Once that conclusion is accepted, it opens the
door for governmental controls designed to limit or strangle the free market,
and eventually leads to a command-driven economy and tyranny.
The problem with this sort of thinking is that it presumes
the early industrial era was an honest example of free-market capitalism, and
that lessons learned there would translate to any free market. This is simply
not so.
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