The-Morality-of-Capitalism-PDF

Mackey: You’ve almost answered the question just by being ableto list those things. Capitalism is ultimately people cooperatingtogether to create value for other people, as well as for themselves.That’s what capitalism is. There’s of course an element of selfinterestin it, as well. The key is being able to create value throughcooperation and doing so for both yourself and for others. Andthat creates diversity of productive effort, because human beingsare very diverse in their wants and desires. Capitalism, cooperatingin the market, aims to satisfy those wants and desires. Sothat creates tremendous space for individuality. If you live inan authoritarian society some special interest group, whether areligious hierarchy or university intellectuals or some group offanatics who think that they know what’s best for everyone, canforce their values on everyone else. They get to dictate to others.In a capitalistic society you have far more space for individuality.There’s space for billions of flowers to grow and flourish in acapitalistic society, simply because human flourishing is ultimatelythe goal or end of capitalism, its greatest creation.Palmer: What’s your vision of a just, enterprising, prosperousfuture?Mackey: What I’d like to see happen is first that the defendersof capitalism start to understand that the strategy they’ve beenusing has really played into the hands of their opponents. They’veconceded the moral high ground and they’ve allowed the enemiesof capitalism to paint it as an exploitative, greedy, selfish systemthat creates inequality, exploits workers, defrauds consumers, andis wrecking the environment while eroding communities. Thedefenders don’t know how to respond to that because they’ve alreadyconceded major ground to the critics of capitalism. Instead,they need to shift away from their obsession with self-interestand begin to see the value that capitalism creates, not merelyfor investors—although, of course, it does that, but the value itcreates for all of the people who trade with business: it createsvalue for customers; it creates value for workers; it creates valuefor suppliers; it creates value for the society as a whole; it createsvalue for governments. I mean, where would our government be25