Forbes Turns to an Anti-Capitalist

I often have more of a problem with fellow pro-capitalists than anti-capitalists because the pro-caps tend to accept the anti-caps’ basic premises, thus letting the anti-caps frame the issue and capture what they can’t on their own, the moral high ground.

But sometimes I get outraged, as I did when I read the Forbes Inside Scoop column titled Capitalism, Built To Last, written by Randall Lane, the chief content officer and editor of Forbes, and published under the tag “Billionaires”.

Randall Lane writes,

Forbes publishes the Just 100 in partnership with Just Capital, a non-profit company started by hedge fund billionaire and Robin Hood Foundation founder Paul Tudor Jones, one of the keenest capitalists. For him, the Just 100 was born of patriotic duty. "There is no bigger threat to our democracy than wealth disparity. It is a story normally reserved for monarchies, dictatorships and plutocracies," Jones tells me. "And yet we got in this pickle because over the past 40 years the corporate focus on profits took on manic proportions relative to other stakeholders such as employees, communities and the planet.” [my emphasis]

The Just 100 statement reads  

Shareholder returns mean nothing if a company's workers, customers, communities and environments aren't considered, too. That's the reasoning underlying the third annual Just 100, our ranking of America's best corporate citizens with our research partner Just Capital.

As it is every year, the Just 100 is a reflection of the issues that matter most to Americans and a ranking of how the nation’s largest publicly traded companies perform in these areas.

The relationship between shareholder returns and workers, customers, communities and environments is important but not relevant here. I covered this issue in depth here and here. My concern here is the Lane quote above.

Jone’s (and Lane’s) implication is that there is no difference between capitalist fortunes built on enriching willing consumers through voluntary trade, and the fortunes acquired by thieving monarchs, dictators, and plutocrats throughout pre-capitalist history! Is there anything the anti-capitalist Left can propagandize that approaches the destructiveness of lumping fortunes by productive work and fortunes by looting into the same package?

NO! This equivocation of capitalist fortunes with the looters’ fortunes of old into a package deal is a central feature of the free enterprise-hating egalitarian socialist Left. With “defenders” of capitalism like Paul Tudor Jones, who needs the socialist Left? And who needs Forbes? Shame on Forbes for bringing the anti-capitalist fox Jones into the capitalist henhouse. This, published in an allegedly pro-capitalist magazine! It is straight out of Elizabeth Warren’s playbook. I’m glad I canceled my Forbes subscription.

My answer to Jones’s disgusting equivocation is, thank you capitalism, including those who thrived over the last 40 years! Let’s consider just one. Ben Silbermann became a billionaire “on paper” when in April 2019 he brought public the company he’d spent the last decade building. That company is Pinterest, which, at the time it made Silbermann a billionaire, boasted 250 million active subscribers, a group that includes my wife. It has now surpassed 300 million! How does that put Silbermann (and his co-founders Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp) in the same category as monarchs, dictators, plutocrats, and other like thieves? How many of those grew their fortunes by creating a product that 300 million people find beneficial enough to voluntarily subscribe to?

My answer to Lane’s lauding of Paul Tuder Jones and his misnamed Robin Hood Foundation is, thank you to Michael Dell and Bill Gates for the computer upon which I am typing this post and to Sergey Brin and Larry Page for the Google Docs and Blogger I’m using—and, on behalf of my wife, to the newest billionaires like the Ben Silbermanns. You guys are part of a class that is only possible under the glorious, “pursuit of happiness” freedom of capitalism--a class that represents the greatest humanitarians that ever existed.

Related Reading:

On the Purpose of a Corporation by the Business Roundtable, PART 1

On the Purpose of a Corporation by the Business Roundtable, PART 2

“Francisco’s Money Speech”

Russell Crowe vs. the Real Robin Hood

The Truth About Robin Hood

Inequality Has Surged Since 1989, but the Lifestyle Gap Has Shrunk --John Tamny

QUORA: 'How is becoming a billionaire even possible, chronologically?'

Oxfam Attacks Prosperity, Part 1

Oxfam Attacks Prosperity, Part 2

Social Security vs. Robin Hood

Obamanomics vs. Robin Hood

Equal Is Unfair: America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality—Don Watkins and Yaron Brook

Capitalism and the Moral High Ground—Craig Biddle