Free market capitalism is a superpower wielded in the hands of those societies that opted-in early and those late to the party. It is unlike anything that came before in hundreds of thousands of years of human development. But a recent cultural shift that prioritises the “maximisation of efficiency” in all things threatens to fully delegitimise this wonder of liberty.
Human progress today is truly unparalleled. In general, despite recent setbacks in prosperity felt around large parts of the world, everyone is orders of magnitude better off than most of our ancestors were a short 200 or so years ago.
Capitalism ranks among the greatest gifts humanity has ever given itself, because it did not simply represent – as it does in Marxist analysis – a “next step” of mechanically moving out from feudalism. It was, instead, a leap of proportions that early capitalist thinkers themselves likely did not realise. Moving to socialism, as we have seen, would be a Great Leap Backwards.
Almost as if on the tip of a needle, the Industrial Revolution represented the moment that destitution went from a given, default reality that must actively be resisted every hour of every day, to a policy choice. Today, poverty is something that is sought out using public policy – socialism, developmental statism, and so on – it is no longer default or normal.
The Industrial Revolution enabled ordinary people to realistically aspire to be owners of property. Indeed, their very labour itself went from something their feudal lord was by right entitled to, to their own property that they could lease out at their own discretion.
And from then on, where policy does not hinder people from improving their own economic lot, they naturally use all the tools capitalism makes available to better their conditions. Relative to those who came before, we have prospered immensely.
Presentness matters
It is difficult for people to comprehend the suffering that our ancestors had to endure. I even recently learned that under certain circumstances, sawdust (yes, sawdust!) was added to bread to give it more bulk – and this was comparatively recent in human history.
Not even the darkest hours I have had to confront in my own life come close to the lot of a person who lost all their children before they reached majority. They themselves likely perished before reaching 35 due to some disease regarded as highly treatable today.
But this is where things get complicated.
In 2016, a medical aid terminated a family’s membership, leaving them with hundreds of thousands of rands worth of medical bills to pay. The reason was crisp and to the point: non-disclosure of prior conditions. This obviously forced them to go to court, where they prevailed against the scheme. The main member passed away while the court battle was ongoing.
In 2017, a man underwent multiple surgeries that his medical aid paid for. During the process, it was discovered that he had undisclosed prior conditions for which he had been treated but which were not disclosed when he joined the new aid. He likely knew that his prior conditions would be excluded from coverage if he declared them. His membership was terminated. In this case, the scheme prevailed.
More recently, a now-defunct AI company demoed a video surveillance system that could be used in coffee shops to track how many cups of coffee baristas were making and whether they were succeeding in retaining customers in-store. This was in the name of maximising efficiency. Presumably, this would lead coffee shops to scrutinise the barista who tended to make the fewest cups of coffee.
Do you see where this is going?
That even a poor person today has it manifold times better than a comparatively rich person had it 250 years ago, is cold comfort to that poor person.
It is also cold comfort to even a relatively wealthy person today, having to watch a family member die from a highly treatable disease because their medical aid denied their claim in clinically formal fashion, never to think about them again.
That normal people might get upset at “capitalism” on occasion should not surprise us, nor should we blame them.
Each of us lives within the reality of our time. That we are better off than our ancestors were does not diminish our individual and social struggles. Simply put, our frame of reference is based in the reality we can experience, and given that this is objectively true for everyone, it means liberal capitalists like me should resist saying that people should not complain about the economic system, and rather try to imagine themselves living in plague-ridden Europe in the 1300s.
My point is not that we should simply defer to and respect people’s “lived experiences”. Certainly not. The outlandish demands that “populist” movements are making of “the system” today should continue to be resisted if we wish to avoid disaster.
But many modern-day capitalists are making it increasingly easy to hate capitalism, and they are doing this unconsciously. It is this lack of consciousness that is the problem.
Individualism
Capitalism is the economic dimension of individualism, in the same way that liberalism is its political dimension and constitutionalism is its jurisprudential dimension.
But human beings are social animals, and it is in this light that individualism must be understood.
Individualism is not a synonym for “introversion”, “hermitry”, or “atomism”. A pack of the greatest social outcasts – take your pick: fetishists, prostitutes, junkies, black metal Satanists – still form communities amongst themselves.
Normative individualism simply advocates that the reconstitution of community can occur at more particular levels. In other words, where collectivism dictates community at a very abstract and largely involuntary level – race, nationality – , individualism allows community at a very determinable and largely voluntary level – profession, preferences, beliefs.
In other words, individualism (and thus capitalism, liberalism, constitutionalism) is not the denial of community. It is simply the particular, voluntarist hardware onto which communitarian software is to be uploaded, as opposed to the abstract, coercive hardware of collectivism.
And just as community and the individual have always gone together, so too have commerce and community. This was particularly the case during the rise of capitalism, when social formations were enabled to provide a safety net for the most vulnerable amongst them.
Soup kitchens, mutual aid societies, private orphanages, and so forth, came about precisely because real wealth could finally be generated by ordinary people that they could then share with their fellows. After all, it was Michael Conway O’Dowd, the longest-serving chairman of the Free Market Foundation, who pioneered corporate social investment (since perverted) in South Africa.
This led faux-“liberals” like Leonard T Hobhouse (Emily Hobhouse’s brother) to rail against charity, deeming one of the most commendable outgrowths of voluntary capitalism essentially undignified. In its stead, Hobhouse advocated rent-seeking state welfare.
Understandable opposition
But the last half-century or so has seen an unhealthy social dynamic develop that seeks to sever commerce from community – pretentious advertisement campaigns wherein big corporates pretend to be “part of” the community notwithstanding.
Capitalism divorced from a consciousness, not of “social justice” and the need for “collective recognition”, but far more simply, of the fact that flesh-and-blood individuals have feelings and desires, is a cold institution. No doubt, even this flawed capitalism still delivers the best times we have ever experienced, but it necessarily invites ignorant though understandable opposition.
The defence of medical aids denying claims or coffee shops or other stores viciously enforcing key performance indicators is nowadays always presented clinically. The human element is ignored amidst proceduralist and formalist arguments.
And even if these arguments from the medical aids are ultimately accepted in theory, human beings will rightly respond, “All right, but all that aside, this person is sick. Help them!”, which the aids will reject.
The coffee shop example is not quite so dire, but if people were to lose their jobs because their bosses are glued to CCTV screens watching their every move (never a problem before surveillance technology, when employees and employers could have perfectly cordial relations), it would leave a bad taste indeed.
Is it any wonder that some people might start to react adversely to what they perceive to be “the system”?
I am not calling for “conscious capitalism”, which for a time was the buzz-phrase that simply meant “balancing” capitalism with state interference. There must be a strict wall of separation between the state and the economy, which is liberalism’s unfinished business. This is imperative.
Efficiency
Instead, I am saying that humanity has lost something important in its relentless pursuit, not of profit as such – the profit motive is the greatest incentive and driver of human progress – but of mere efficiency.
Whereas a bank manager, not too long ago, could make an exception for the local farmer to give him some more time on that mortgage, this is unheard of today. “Speak to head office”.
As we have seen, medical aids ferociously go after people who “misrepresent” their pre-existing conditions and smugly defend this on actuarial principles, saying the business model falls apart if they do not do so. In this, the sickly individual is completely lost and forgotten.
And this pursuit of efficiency is not capitalism’s fault.
Even the most diehard advocates of social justice and socialism have amongst them people who complain about 10-minute explainer videos on YouTube being “too long”. In their own nationalised healthcare systems, state bureaucrats easily deny specialised treatment to someone in the name of “safeguarding the system for the collective”.
Humanity has undergone a wholesale cultural shift that emphasises efficiency maximisation in all spheres, alongside a lamentable increase in time-preference. Everything has to be quick, minimalist, clean, and perfect, and with very few exceptions, we are generally complicit in driving this shift.
We lose a lot of our perspective and consideration of others in this single-minded desire to maximise efficiency.
We should instead be willing, eager even, to sacrifice some efficiency in exchange for consideration. This would be well worth the cost, because capitalism paired with consideration did exist and did still produce prosperity. This was when capitalism – ever conscious that it was complementary to community, and community complementary to it – was at its peak.
Nothing stops us from rediscovering that magic.
[Image: Fab Lentz on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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