QUORA: 'How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game?' -- The Mugger vs the Landlord

Recently, I posted an answer to the Quora* question, How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game? (Also available on my 1/14/21  blog post). Another answer triggered a reply from me.

Pascal Morimacil’s answered:

The basic idea is that if you consider every transaction individually, without looking at anything else, then it kinda seems like both people are better off, since they agree to the trade.

So for example, you pay rent for the right to exist somewhere, and then someone else lets you exist without evicting you. It’s said to be win-win. So, a creation of wealth.

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You could analyze a mugging that way, and declare it to be a win-win wealth creating situation.

The victim is paying for the right to exist, and the mugger lets them exist without shooting them. Win-win. If the victim thinks the price is too high, they can just decide not to pay.

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You kind of have to ignore the gun, or the threat of eviction

And if you also ignore a lot of other things, like pollution and so on, and rising wealth inequality, well, at some point you are just deciding that money changing hands means things are getting better for everyone.

My reply:

There is no “if you consider every transaction individually, without looking at anything else”: The only way to analyze economics (or any aspect of human affairs) is to begin with the individual, since the individual is the only human entity that exists. The “economy” is an abstraction, subsuming all relevant individual transactions. All other considerations are derivative from individualism. 

And you should never “ignore the gun, or the threat of eviction,” both of which are instances of force. But the corollary is you should not ignore the nature of that force: Is the force aggressive, or defensive? 

From that premise, the analogy is backwards. In the real world, the free-loading renter is the mugger -- that is, the aggressor.

In the legitimate rental transaction, both offer value to the other, and it is a mutually consensual  transaction. No force is involved. The renter pays his money, which represents wealth creation to the landlord, in exchange for living in the rental unit, which is wealth creation to the renter, since each is getting a higher value than he is giving up. It’s win-win, by mutual consent. The mugger, on the other hand, offers nothing of value to his victim, and the victim doesn’t consent, because the mugger is using aggressive force to take his victim’s property. The mugger is actually threatening two of his victim’s values, his life and his money. Holding a gun on someone is not wealth creation. Not killing his victim is not a value. It is the negation of a value, not unlike the whip of a slave master. To call the mugger’s actions wealth creation is absurd and a slap in the face to anyone who has ever done an honest day’s work.

If the renter stops paying rent, for whatever reason (need is not a license to steal), the transaction is no longer win-win, and the renter has a moral obligation to vacate the property (assuming the landlord doesn’t grant him rent-free occupancy). If the renter refuses to vacate, despite not paying his rent, he is demanding someone else’s property without offering any value in return and without his consent. It is theft as much as is the mugging. The renter’s refusal to vacate the rental unit is a form of aggressive force, since the renter is physically preventing the owner from re-renting his property, denying him rental income. Thus, the mugger forcibly taking his victim’s money is in principle no different from the renter occupying the landlord’s property without paying rent. 

The mugging victim is not “paying” for the “right to exist”; i.e., the right to life. The right to life means only the right of self-ownership and self-governance; i.e., to think and act on one’s own judgement, in pursuit of one’s values, by peaceful respectful means: The right to life does not mean the “right” to force others to provide the means of living (“existing” in your terminology). The right to life, like the right to one’s property, is an inalienable right, held equally by everyone--and that includes the right not to be anyone’s slave. The renter is not paying for his “right to exist.” He is paying for the right to a particular housing unit, derived from the mutually agreed obligation to pay rent to use the landlord’s property. The renter’s non-payment forfeits his right to the housing unit. Being evicted does not forfeit his right to exist, or to his life. 

Now let’s say the mugger’s victim manages to flag down a cop, who stops the robbery, apprehends the mugger, and returns the money to the victim. That’s no different from the landlord beginning legal eviction proceedings. Both are acts of self-defense. The government’s only proper purpose is to protect and secure individual rights, including rights to property and free (voluntary, mutually consensual) trade--in effect, to act as the individual’s agent of self-defense. If the landlord gets a court-ordered eviction notice, and the police have to be called to enforce it, that’s no different from a cop coming to the aid of the mugger’s victim. The gun and the eviction are not analogous. The threat of the mugger is aggressive force. The eviction notice is defensive force.

As to the last two points touched upon, wealth inequality is a natural consequence of the varying productive abilities and personal circumstances of human beings, when left equally free to flourish by the justice, political equality, liberty rights, and constitutionalism of capitalism. Productive work and trade, to the extent it is free of aggressive force as it is under capitalism, expands the amount of wealth, as happens with the renter and the landlord. Trade doesn’t merely divide up a fixed quantity of wealth, like what happens between the mugger and his victim.  Under capitalism, wealth inequality is not a proof of zero-sum economics, but a progressive consequence of the win-win nature of capitalism--that an individual’s economic success is tied not to theft but on the diversity of productive ability to create value for others. Those who create the most value for the most people tend to be more wealthy than those who produce less value for fewer people. As long as every transaction is consensual and freely judged by each to be a net gain, it is win-win, not zero-sum. Pollution is a side effect of industry and is resolvable through technological innovation and proper law. History has shown that capitalist economies are much better at alleviating pollution than centrally planned (socialist) economies because technological innovation and proper (rights-protecting) law are features of free markets, not dictatorships. The same freedom of capitalism that facilitates economic progress facilitates solutions to pollution. Today we live in the cleanest ever environment for humans, especially in the U.S., not in spite of but because of the prosperity.

Related Reading:

QUORA: ‘Is capitalism voluntary?’

QUORA: ‘Why has modern capitalism risen in the West?’

QUORA: ‘How do capitalists justify the inequality/high disparity part of a capitalistic society that a socialistic system tends to stop?’

QUORA: 'Can certain forms of capitalism be made to work for the people instead of just the elite?'

QUORA*: ‘Is it fair to claim that capitalism does not create better lives, but simply shifts the suffering somewhere else?’

QUORA: 'Why do people think capitalism is ethical?'

QUORA: ‘Is it fair to say capitalism has killed more people than communism?’

QUORA *: 'How is capitalism good despite the fact that it creates higher and lower classes?'

QUORA: '[W]hy do we ignore all the examples of capitalism failing, like the major divide between the wealthy and the poor in the US?'

QUORA: ‘Given that I live in a capitalist society, how can I avoid having my labor exploited?’

QUORA: "Is having an 'Anarcho-capitalist' society possible?"

* [Quora is a social media website founded by two former Facebook employees. According to Wikipedia:

Quora is a question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited and organized by its community of users. The company was founded in June 2009, and the website was made available to the public on June 21, 2010.[3]Quora aggregates questions and answers to topics. Users can collaborate by editing questions and suggesting edits to other users' answers.[4]

You can also reply to other users’ answers.]

Happy Groundhog Day

 Happy Groundhog Day! May we have six more weeks of winter. (Well, we havn't actually had real winter yet, at least not in New Jersey.)

Will Biden Acknowledge His Own Party’s ‘Central Role’ in Segregating America?

From AP News, 1/27/21:

President Joe Biden on Tuesday ordered the Department of Justice to end its reliance on private prisons and acknowledge the central role government has played in implementing discriminatory housing policies.

In remarks before signing the orders, Biden said the U.S. government needs to change “its whole approach” on the issue of racial equity. He added that the nation is less prosperous and secure because of the scourge of systemic racism. 

My emphasis. I wonder if Biden will acknowledge the “central role” of his own Party’s deliberate, decades-long, systemic design to legally segregate America. It’s all laid out in Richard Rothstein’s book “The Color of Law”. Segregation was the project of the liberal/progressive/Democratic Party agenda. Rothstein writes:

“Racial segregation in housing was not merely a project of southerners in the former slaveholding Confederacy. It was a nationwide project of the federal government in the twentieth century, designed and implemented by its most liberal leaders” including Franklin D. Roosevelt. [p. X - XII, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America] 

I always knew that legalized segregation existed in America even though, as Rothstein observes, “segregation was always unconstitutional.” But I never knew the extent, or who was primarily to blame, until I read this shocking book. Will Biden acknowledge the whole truth, especially since the very same liberals intend to push reparations? Will he place blame where it belongs, with his own Party? Or will he blame “white supremacy” or some other such bullshit excuse?

Related Reading:

NJ: Focus on Educational Freedom, Not ‘Desegregation’

A Newark, NJ Mother Demonstrates the Educational Power of Parental School Choice

Title 2: Government vs. Private Action

How to Overcome Bigotry in a Free Society

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein. 

My Facebook post

Corporate Halt to Political Donations Highlights Value of Private Campaign Funding

[Updated 3/7/21]

A major plank in the Democratic Party Platform includes a plank to ban all private funding of elections, saying “Democrats believe that the interests and the voices of the American people should determine our elections.” How will they do that? Through a constitutional amendment “eliminating all private financing from federal elections.” Who will then finance election campaigns? The government, with money seized from private citizens regardless of their consent. (Page 57)

Private funding of political campaigns is one of the best ways for citizens to keep politicians accountable to those they seek to govern. Politicians should have to go to the citizens, hat-in-hand, to ask for money to finance their campaigns. The Democrats’ want to take that accountability away, and give politicians free reign to grab their money away without their consent. As I wrote on this subject in 2016:

Public funding is a dream come true for the power-hungry political class. Imagine politicians being able to go on their unfettered way of regulating, taxing, and controlling our lives without having to put up with those pesky private citizens getting in their way? How many politicians would love to silence dissent and challenge? Nothing could be more contrary to democratic principles under constitutional republicanism than that.

The Democratic statists would enhance “the voices of the American people” by banning their voice in who gets funded to run for office, and switching that voice to the politicians who themselves would determine who gets the funding.

Well, we just got a lesson on the value of private financing. As The New York Times reported on 1/12/21:

Large corporations and their lobbyists usually try to steer clear of messy political fights. Companies prefer to work behind the scenes, giving money to both political parties and quietly influencing tax policy, spending and regulation. But President Trump’s effort to overturn the result of the presidential election — and the violent attack on Congress by his supporters — has created a dilemma for many companies. A growing number have decided that they are, at least for now, not willing to support members of Congress who backed Trump’s efforts to change the election result and promoted lies about election fraud.

Over the weekend, several large companies — Marriott, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Commerce Bancshares — announced a suspension of donations to members of Congress who voted against election certification. Yesterday, the list expanded to Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, Airbnb, Mastercard, Verizon and Dow, the chemical company. Hallmark has even asked for its money back from two of the senators who opposed certification, Josh Hawley and Roger Marshall.

The Times also noted that some companies announced halts on all campaign giving, while others announced no halt. These are major corporate donors. I suspect that many smaller donors are reconsidering their donations after the tumultuous lockdown and violent 2020.

Another example of how campaign funding gives private citizens a voice over the politicians came after the January 6th Capitol riot during Congress’s Electoral College certification vote for Joe Biden. In a 3/6/21 article, Chamber of Commerce declines to rebuke members of Congress who voted to overturn 2020 election, Aaron Gregg reports for the Washington Post:

America’s largest business lobby says it will not pull support for members of Congress based solely on whether they voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election win in Arizona and Pennsylvania.

In a memo released Friday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that the organization would continue to evaluate the actions of individual members of Congress but would not withhold funds based solely on their vote.

"There is a meaningful difference between a member of Congress who voted no on the question of certifying the votes of certain states and those who engaged and continue to engage in repeated actions that undermine the legitimacy of our elections and institutions," wrote Ashlee Rich Stephenson, a senior political strategist at the chamber.

I don’t know what kinds of effects these private donor actions will have on the politicians affected. But they surely will have some effect. At any rate, the donor boycotts will surely send a message--a message that they would not be able to send without the leverage that comes with politicians having to depend on their private constituents for money they need to run their campaigns on.

Of course, people have the moral right to decide whether and who to donate money to in political campaigns. The politicians have no right to seize their campaign funds from American citizens through taxes. America is supposed to be a free country. The politicians are supposed to serve the people, not master them.

That said, these corporate boycotters have given us a practical demonstration on the value of private campaign funding. They demonstrate how private campaign financing makes politicians accountable to the governed. In the name of “believe[ing] that the interests and the voices of the American people should determine our elections,” the Democrats want to greatly reduce the American people’s voices in American politics.

Related Reading:

Campaign Finance—Voluntary Contributions vs. Public Funding: Which is ‘Dirty?’

The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racists’: San Diego’s ‘Educators’

In San Diego Public Schools Will Overhaul Its Grading System To Achieve 'Anti-Racism', Reason’s Robby Soave explains:

District officials evidently believe that the practice of grading students based on their average score is racist, and that an active effort to dismantle racism necessitates a learning environment free of the pressure to turn in assignments on time. As evidence for the urgency of these changes, the district released data showing that minority students received more Ds and Fs than white students: Just 7 percent of whites received failing grades, as opposed to 23 percent of Native Americans, 23 percent of Hispanics, and 20 percent of black students.

Again, statistics -- the last refuge of damned lyers. What do these statistics tell you about any actual, individual student’s learning issues? Absolutely nothing. Soave hits the nail on the head:

In any case, ending these kinds of grades doesn't actually eliminate the underlying inequities that produced the disparate Fs. It may actually cover those inequities up: Given that grades are a tool for evaluating students' progress, the district is essentially announcing that it will no longer gather as much evidence about the negative social phenomena it would probably like to address. Better grades do not mean students will suddenly have a better grasp of the material. They certainly won't be better prepared for college (where traditional grades are very much still a thing).

Indeed, this comes perilously close to addressing poverty by no longer tallying the number of homeless people—or, to use a timely example, President Donald Trump's frustration that increasing COVID-19 testing will make the epidemic look worse. Coronavirus cases exist even if they go undetected; similarly, minority students who are falling behind their classmates will be falling behind even if their teachers aren't giving them Fs.

I hate the term “inequity” as it is used today. Mirriam-Webster defines “inequity” as “an instance of injustice or unfairness.” What instances of injustice or unfairness do these statistics identify? Absolutely none. They identify averages divided by “race”—that is, skin color—or national origin. But since the only human entity that exists is the individual, group averages tell you nothing about individuals. And the individual is who you must focus on if you want to explain statistical differences. Statistics only inform, and as Joel Best explains, more often than not inaccurately. You can learn nothing about individuals by studying groups. You can only understand group statistics by focussing on the individuals that make it up. What can any individual within the group do to improve his/her study habits, etcetera?

Of course, focussing on the individual would require adopting the principle of individualism, the only antipode to racism, because racism is a manifestation of collectivism, individualism’s antipode. The problem is, the San Diego “educators” are collectivists. And collectivism is the most inequitable way to judge people. What can be more unjust or unfair than to judge any individual by the color of his skin, or national origin?

So San Diego’s alleged educators are judging the Native American, Hispanic, and black students who fail according to the current grading standards, as a homogenous group, as inherently incapable of passing objective standards by reason of color and national origin. This, in the name of “anti-racism.” *

Further, students who do pass are being robbed of their success. Is this just ? Is this fair? Is this just and fair to the 77% of Native Americans, the 77% of Hispanics, and the 80% of Blacks who achieve good grades, let alone the 93% of successful white students? Is it just and fair to tear down achievement? How will it help the failing students to better themselves to destroy objective standards of education?

This is not to say that methods of measuring educational achievement and progress can’t be flawed, or in need of improvement.

But these statistical rationalizations have nothing to do with education. They have everything to do with the collectivists worldview, which sees individual identity as having nothing to do with content of character. It is Egalitarianism, the anti-natural idea of universal functional equality--that any difference in achievement is inherently a problem that must be “fixed”. It is collectivism. It is racism. It is evil.

* [John McWhorter, the Columbia University professor and scholar with 1776Unites, identified the nature of this phenomena long before it went “mainstream.” in a 2015 paper McWhorter analyzed “Antiracism, Our Flawed New Religion.” McWhorter observes: “Opposition to racism used to be a political stance. Now it has every marking of a religion, with both good and deleterious effects on American society.”]

Related Reading:

The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racists’

The Racism of the 'Anti-Racists': 'This New America' - Apartheid?

The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racists’: The NJ State Budget

The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racists’: NJ Governor Murphy’s Strange and Discriminatory ‘Baby Bonds’ Scheme

An Anti-Racist Education for Middle Schoolers by ROBBY SOAVE for Reason

Related Viewing:

Insane Leftists Want to CANCEL GRADING in School by Yaron Brook, sectioned from Is Grading Conditioning us to be Capitalist?: A review of the video Grading is Capitalist Conditioning by Ryan Hibbs.

The ‘Crisis’ Dictatorship

The ‘Crisis’ Dictatorship

As I've said before in regard to New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s response to COVID-19, the pandemic has exposed a dangerous loophole in American Constitutional governance--politicians need only declare an "emergency" to commandeer totalitarian powers and circumvent the rule of law and separation of powers. 

This seed is now sprouting like a weed. In Team Biden Vows ‘Decisive Action’ On ‘Four Crises’ In First Ten Days,  Eric Quintanar reports for The Daily Wire:

Incoming White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain vowed Saturday that President-elect Joe Biden will take “decisive action” on four different crises affecting the country during his first ten days in office.

In a memo to incoming senior White House staff, Klain identified the four crises as “the COVID-19 crisis, the resulting economic crisis, the climate crisis, and a racial equity crisis,” and promised Biden would take executive actions to address them.

My emphasis. The precedent has been set, the flood gates are open, and Biden will take full advantage, giving America another big, possibly fatal, push toward authoritarianism. These crises, Klain says, require “urgent action,” meaning bypassing the Congress—the rule of law—and ruling by executive order—by one man’s edicts.

I had feared that a Democratic Administration would use the COVID-19 pandemic as a model for a power grab based on the alleged “climate crisis.” In  As We Endure Through COVID-19 Lockdowns, Dems Gear Up for ‘Climate Crisis’ Authoritarianism, I wrote:

If you think I overreacted in calling Donald Trump’s invocation of the Defense Production Act a dangerous precedent, consider Barack Obama’s comments regarding Trump’s rollback of Obama’s auto mileage regulation. 

In Obama Compares Climate Change To Coronavirus, Rips Trump Rule Change, the Daily Caller’s William Davis reports:

Former President Barack Obama compared climate change to the coronavirus pandemic and criticized President Donald Trump for rolling back one of his administration’s key climate initiatives.

“We’ve seen all too terribly the consequences of those who denied warnings of a pandemic,” Obama tweeted Tuesday. “We can’t afford any more consequences of climate denial. All of us, especially young people, have to demand better of our government at every level and vote this fall.”

My emphasis. It turns out I underestimated the consequences of the COVID-19 precedent. A “racial equity crisis?” The racism of the “Anti-Racist” movement has reached the top of the American government. If you can look at statistical disparities based on racial groups as a “crisis,” what can’t be deemed a “crisis” justifying the next authoritarian wave by whomever happens to be in the White House at the time?

It gets worse. The main theme of Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration speech was not, as many think, some vague notion of “unity.” It was “The cascading crises of our era,” as The New York Times put it on 1/21/21.The Times reported:

President Biden named six crises that the U.S. faces: the virus, climate change, growing inequality, racism, America’s global standing and an attack on truth and democracy. 

So we’re up to eight crises. In addition to the COVID-19 crisis, the resulting economic crisis, the climate crisis, and a racial equity crisis, we now can add “growing inequality, racism, America’s global standing and an attack on truth and democracy.”

This last—the "attack on Truth", also referred to "the reality crisis"—is astounding, coming from a politician, especially Joe Biden, the man who dreams up crises like a child adding to a Christmas wish list. This, from the man who said “Climate change is the existential threat to humanity. Unchecked, it is going to actually bake this planet. This is not hyperbole. It’s real.” Yes, politicians engage in hyperbole all the time. But note that Biden took pains to emphasize that he means it. It looks like truth is a crisis, all right -- for Joe Biden. 

Baked!?! This would be comical, except for the fact that it’s coming from the president of the United States!

Trump was accused of pushing America toward more authoritarianism. There’s truth in that. He did. But his authoritarianism was more bluster than real. Trump’s authoritarianism is non-ideological power-lust. That’s dictatorial, for sure. Now, under Biden, we are going to see what real authoritarianism looks like, Biden style. It’s much more dangerous, because the Democratic Party’s authoritarianism is ideologically driven. Theirs is a statist Ideology, specifically collectivist, which will lead to some form of socialism. Ideology leads not just to dictatorship but to totalitarianism, as Nazism, Communism, and theocracy do. The Biden Administration won’t end in totalitarianism. But that’s its orientation, because socialist—criminal socialist—by design. Whereas Trump-style authoritarianism is simply bullying people, socialism is subordination of all individual affairs to state authority. 

The real American crisis is the erosion of the Founding principle of America, inalienable individual rights. Implicite in Biden’s announced crisis agenda is the vast expansion of government power over our lives that will be claimed as necessary to eliminate these cascading crises--crises that are undefined, unintelligible, and thus open-ended. The erosion of individual liberty rights didn’t start with Biden, of course. And it remains to be seen how bad it will be under Biden, although the erosion seems sure to continue in some capacity. Perhaps it’s time to invert the American Flag in protest against the ongoing retreat of the fundamental principles of Americanism.

In the meanwhile, the “crisis” dictatorship is here. It’s going to be a rough ride. While Biden did not initiate the long-term descent into authoritarianism, he will push it forward in a big way. The fight goes on. America is not, as Biden said, fundamentally about Democracy or “the will of the people.” America is first and foremost about individual rights, the Safe Space that protects each individual’s liberty from “the will of the people”--totalitarian Democracy, along with all other forms of tyranny on man over man. America's true unity is based not on collectivist central planning, but on respect for each other’s individual rights. It is not the unity in socialist chains.

Related Reading:

Criminal Socialism vs. a Free Society

Election 2020: The Pickpocket vs. the Murderer

The Scary Ease with Which Some Americans Accept Authoritarianism

New U.N. Study Shows Climate Catastrophists Getting More Open About their Totalitarian Designs

‘Climate Crisis’: The Dem’s Path to Totalitarian Socialism

As We Endure Through COVID-19 Lockdowns, Dems Gear Up for ‘Climate Crisis’ Authoritarianism

Why the Push Is on to Make Pandemic Life 'Permanent': COVID-19 is new. But the reaction to the crisis is starting to look familiar. by Tom Mullin for FEE

Related Viewing:

YBS: The Future -- Truth Czar on the Left & God and Country on the Right; a discussion of "The Reality Crisis".

Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. For His Moral Ideals Rather Than His Politics

 In commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Peniel E. Joseph, the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Tufts University, said in a 2014 article:

King emerges as a talented individual whose rhetorical genius at the March on Washington helped elevate an entire nation through his moral power and sheer force of will.

The March on Washington was when King delivered his famous 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. Joseph goes on:

Yet missing from many of the annual King celebrations is the portrait of a political revolutionary who, over time, evolved into a radical warrior for peace, justice and the eradication of poverty. During his last three years, King the “Dreamer” turned into one of the most eloquent, powerful and scathing critics of American society. King lent his moral force and power to anti-poverty crusades that questioned the economic system of capitalism and called for an end to the Vietnam War. . . . King’s powerful rage against economic exploitation and war is often overlooked when we think of him as only a race-healer.

The "moral power" of King's famous "Dream" speech in Washington was actually the moral power of the Founding Fathers resurrected. In that speech, King reminded Americans of the ideals laid down in the Declaration of Independence—the philosophic blueprint for the constitution and the new nation—and called on Americans to fully live up to those ideals. “In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check,” King said.

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

Yet, King's Dream was to be corrupted by an inner contradiction. In his later years, King questioned the legitimacy of capitalism and turned to what he termed "democratic socialism," a hybrid of two evil systems (democracy and socialism) that repudiates the very ideals he espoused in his speech. In a supreme irony, King unwittingly aligned with the political ideology of America's first encounter with Democratic Socialism, the Confederate Slaveocracy.* Therein lies one of the great American paradoxes—the clash between King the moral force and King the political revolutionary.

When the Founders drafted the Declaration of Independence, they laid down the radical principles that would give birth to capitalism. These 55 brilliant words—the opening lines of the second paragraph of the Declaration—sum up the essence of capitalism:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . .

When King reaffirmed those ideals—that all men are created equal, possessing inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness protected equally and at all times under a government of objective law rather than of men—he was really, though apparently unwittingly, affirming the foundational principles of capitalism.

Capitalism is the system based on individual rights, rights-protecting government and the only kind of equality consistent with justice—equality of individual rights before the law. Because of these principles, Capitalism is the only social system that banishes exploitation and war, because individual rights banishes aggressive or initiatory force from human relationships—particularly aggressive force by government against the people. Under capitalism, exploitation is replaced with voluntary trade to mutual benefit among individuals, a win-win in which individuals trade value-for-value and get better together. Capitalism liberates every individual to think and act on his own judgement and work to lift himself from poverty, and protects those who take up that life-affirming challenge from would-be exploiters who don’t. And under capitalism, war is replaced with peaceful coexistence among nations based on that principle of trade.

So why would King uphold the moral principles of capitalism in his most famous speech while repudiating it in his politics? It's obvious that King didn't understand capitalism or fully grasp the moral implications of the Declaration of Independence that he so eloquently honored.

He undoubtedly viewed the America of the 1960s as capitalist, when in fact what America had was a mixed economy; a mixture of economic freedom and government controls—that is to say, an economy corrupted by heavy political interference, which included the virulently anti-capitalist Jim Crow segrgation laws. America in the 1960s was just emerging from a time when large segments of blacks were legally oppressed and hence unable to enjoy “the riches of freedom and the security of justice” that is capitalism. Blacks, King failed to understand, were not victims of capitalism but of statism.

King’s legacy includes an end to state-sponsored segregation and oppression—a monumental achievement. But his democratic socialist political policies also “succeeded,” strengthening and entrenching the mixed economy in America, which he mistakenly perceived as capitalism—the result being, in turn, to reduce economic opportunities for many poor but ambitious people, including African-Americans.

To his credit, King explicitly opposed full-blown socialism, which he believed leads to communism, a system that he correctly understood "forgets that life is individual." But he wrongly believed that "Capitalism forgets that life is social," leading him to his hybrid democratic socialism. He failed to see that capitalism, by leaving individuals free to pursue their own values in the absence of physical coercion, provides the only proper moral foundation for both individual flourishing and robust benevolent social interaction. That moral foundation, rational egoism, is implicit in the Declaration of Independence, which defends the inalienable rights of every individual to pursue his own happiness.

Thus is the paradox of Martin Luther King.

Commentators like Joseph urge us to elevate his politics to at least the level of his ideals. That, of course, would be an impossible contradiction. But ideas are where the real power lies. Since ideas are the driving force of human events, Martin Luther King, despite his politics, remains one of my heroes. Standing in a line that includes John Locke, the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and Ayn Rand, among others, King reaffirmed America's Founding ideals at a crucial point in American history. That, to me, is his real legacy contribution to America. For that, I am grateful to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

HAPPY MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY!!

* [See Randy E. Barnett, Our Republican Constitution, Chapter 4 “How Slavery Led to a More Republican Constitution.” See George Fitzhugh, "Centralization and Socialism." See especially C. Bradley Thompson, America's Revolutionary Mind, Epilogue, Page 359-386: Thompson documents the "common intellectual heritage" of 19th Century pro-slavery intellectuals and 20th-21st Century Progressives.]

Related Reading:

Martin Luther King: An 'Authentic American Hero'—or Not?

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Fundamental Principle of America

“I Have a Dream”: Martin Luther King Urges Consistency to Founding Principles

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty—Timothy Sandefur

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal—Ayn Rand

Martin Luther King: Right On Racial Justice, Wrong On ‘Economic Justice’

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