Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism

Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism‘politically motivated interference’ when their profits arethreatened. As it happens, most of the regulatory examplesChang offers do not unequivocally benefit capitalists. Onthe contrary, it is quite conceivable that businessmencould have more money-making opportunities if theycould sell slaves or employ children in heavily pollutingmethamphetamine labs. The laws he mentions have generallycome about as a result of lobbying from an assortmentof conservatives, socialists, environmentalists and ‘concernedcitizens’, rather than by rent-seeking industrialists.Nevertheless, it is not difficult to come up with an alternativelist of regulations which have been created tobenefit big business. Chang is quite right to draw attentionto the influence of special interests, including commercialinterests, in the creation of laws. He is quite wrong, however,to imply that supporters of a free market are comfortablewith this. His mistake is to conflate capitalism – or acertain type of capitalism – with a free market. 1 For morethan 200 years, economists have complained that capitalists,or business interests, are among the free market’sgreatest foes. ‘Business corporations in general are not defendersof free enterprise,’ wrote Milton Friedman in 1978,1 This confusion begins with his book’s title: 23 Things They Don’t TellYou About Capitalism. Throughout the book, it is clear that ‘they’are free-market economists, and yet the ‘things they don’t tell you’involve criticisms that free-market economists have been voicingfor many years. It is absurd to suggest that free-market economistsbelieve that Africa cannot develop without foreign aid (Chapter 11),that the world’s poor are less entrepreneurial than Westerners(Chapter 15) and that bailing out General Motors is to be applauded(Chapter 18).54