This economic system called capitalism
is very simple really.
First it requires private property.
This skyscraper is private property
and this hoody is private property too.
You know before capitalism if you were a common person
you didn't own anything.
The State or the King or the Duke or the Emir
or the Emperor or the whoever
owned all of the land and everything on it
and much of the time they owned you as well.
The ability for a common person to have something
that belongs to him or her
is an earth-shaking innovation historically.
And second, capitalism needs a free-market.
individuals need to be able to buy and sell
their private property
and these trades are voluntary.
Its this non-coercive voluntary ability
to buy and sell in your own personal interest
that makes capitalism so morally superior
to socialism, aristocracies,
dictatorships, or anything else where
someone else determines what's in your best interest
freedom and capitalism go hand-in-hand
and you cannot have one
existing without the other
but the main reason capitalism is the bomb
is because of one exceedingly simple idea.
Your work and your reward
are tied together.
Capitalism works
because it rewards and incentivizes us
to do more work
than we would otherwise have to.
Let's imagine a caveman
he and his clan live up in the mountains,
they're hunters who eat meat.
And because they're hunters
they make incredible spears
they're straight and strong
with razor sharp flint spearheads
and they're covered in elaborate carvings for good magic
but they don't do much gathering up there
so their baskets kind of look like birds' nests.
Now, down in the valley is another tribe
they grow their own food
and go out every day to harvest it and bring it home
since they do very little hunting
their spears are just thin sticks
that break almost every time
but their baskets are so well made that they can almost hold water
now one day a guy from the hunter tribe
meets a guy from the gatherer tribe in the Midlands
and these two proto-geniuses decide to make a trade
one well-built powerful spear
for one well-made intricate basket
the spear maker goes back up to the caves
everyone comes out to marvel at the wonderful basket
no one's ever seen anything like it
He is now the wealthiest man in the clan
because he has something that everybody wants
and no one else has.
Now here's the actual miracle.
If that cave mans a socialist
he's going to lend out the basket to the tribe
and it's gonna get banged up
and people will want to hog it
and that leads to several murders
until eventually the basket just falls apart
but this proto-capitalist genius
stares at the cave ceiling all night
and he says to himself, Trevor
you need to make two Spears a week
in order to survive
because that's how many get lost or broken
but if you stay up later at night
and get up earlier in the morning
I'll bet you could make an extra three Spears per week
then he realizes that his daughter is not
going to starve to death after all
because idiot son-in-law is going to
come in and help him make Spears
instead of flinging poop
at saber-toothed Tigers all day
now fortunately the gatherer is also a
free-trade capitalists and a few days
later they need to exchange three
wonderful Spears for three excellent baskets
and each goes back home
now it is true that both the spear maker and the basket
maker will have amassed more shiny
pebbles or seashells than the others in
other words more money
but who loses here
the more trading they do
the more common these items become
and the price goes down on baskets the same way it
goes down on 4k televisions
as more and more of those are made
pretty soon everybody has a better basket
than they ever imagined possible
and in the other village
everyone has an incredible spear
everybody is wealthier, everybody's life is improved
and you would think
that would make everybody happy, but not quite
because there are a few bastards up there
who do not think about the awesome baskets
that they now have
when they didn't have them before.
All they can think about
is how many shiny stones
the guy who did all the work has.
These people are bitter, envious, and miserable.
They contribute nothing but grief and whining.
Eventually, they became known as Democrats
