The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

36 THE FREEMAN Januaryservice alone should be sufficientto cure anybody - even .the mostgullible - of such a conviction.The Poverty BugabooThe activists in the driveagainst private business undertakingsand an economy depending onthe market for guidance generallystart their attack by questioningthe position that by these meanswe have achieved a genuinely prosperousstatus. They can hardlydeny the fact of an astonishingadvance in technical devices andmethods and an accompanyingsurge in the level of economic output,but they contend that the ma-­jor benefit of the improvementgoes to the few rather than themany, and that the injustices inherentin the way the pie is cutand distributed are so serious asto warrant the indictment of thesystem rather than its support.That the mechanism of the marketwill not work out perfectly inpractice, even if not harassed orhamstrung by interventions, mustbe acknowledged. The Americanexperience, .although extraordinary,has certainly not been freefrom difficulties and inequities;the results, even from a neutralpoint of view, fall short of achievingan ideal state of affairs. Thefrailties of men have not been overcome;unfairness and predatoryconduct have not been eliminated.But any careful examination ofthe available data will show thatthe radical detractors, the peopledetermined to substitute completecollectivism for a still partiallyfreemarket economy, are way offbase. In the first place they makethe old Marxian mistake of assumingthat you can have mass productionwithout mass consumption.If millions of bathtubs aremade there must be millions ofusers; they can't all be crowdedinto the homes of the very wealthy.The truth is that capitalism hasbeen the great leveler. In the industrialcountries generally, andespecially in the United States, themost striking feature of the trekup the hill has been the great improvementin the lot of the ordinary,mine-run individual. Withthe development of machine methods,broad markets, and representativegovernment, it becameno longer possible for a small rulingclass to skim off all the cream,leaving the masses at or near thesubsistence level - the conditionprevailing through most of humanhistory.The willingness of those workingto destroy private enterpriseand enthrone government to closetheir eyes to the actual situationis somewhat puzzling, and at timesmakes one question the sincerityof their accusations and protestations.It is true, of course, that