The Capitalist Manifesto: Greed Is Good

There are too many factual errors or presupposition in this article. Poor result by Left leaning parties in Indian election being one. The Left parties (particularly in West Bengal) lost their majority not because of their anti-liberalization stand. It is rather in contrary to your argument, specifically, for their pro-market stance regards of giving up agricultural land to TATA and others for auto-industry and so forth. There is no doubt that capitalism is the most well practiced economic system around the world, but you have done a very sloppy job in regards of figuring out the reasons of very nature of crisis prone capitalism. It is not mere individual greed or some disjointed economic policies bring crisis, it is rather more well orchestrated strategy geared towards capital accumulation by few at the cost of many. In a nutshell, as David Harvey argues, the whole circus of capitalism seeks running with this mantra "accumulation by dispossession."

http://wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/zaka-j04.shtml
A cutting resonse to Mr Zakaria's hand-wringing apology

the original "Capitalist Manifesto" was created in 1958 by Louis O. Keslo and Mortimer J. Adler.
"Wealth of Nations "was created by Adam Smith, a Scottish economist in 1776.
Wealth of Nations advocated the free market economy, which is the foundation of capitalism (a term not invented during Mr. Smith's time). "The Capitalist Manifesto" was written in response to the "Manifesto of the Communist Party".

for Mr. Zakaria to label his article as The Capitalist Manifesto, misleads the reader and borderlines on plagerism.

Those controlling the status quo use greed as their armor.
They find their greedy freinds and they plot greedy takeovers
of the unsuspecting. If a non greedy person actually makes
some money or is close to making money, the scrum begins.

Best bet, trust no one, verify repeatedly prior to trusting and
when you can, find other people of conscience and help them.

Zakaria nails it, that the fault lies within the rules we have laid out for the game. In the game of Monopoly we understand that cheating is not required for economic disaster, i.e. one rich person and everyone else homeless. Why is that so hard here? Low interest rates have wrecked the capital in capitalism. We know personally that reserves are necessary. If a friend asks for $100 until next week, you know they are in trouble. But banks and big companies do it with 'paper' to meet payroll, basic inventory. They save nothing. The cost of borrowing has to be allowed float up to equilibrium. ... which means that the government needs to get out of the business of setting the rates, and yes, I mean, the government needs to stop borrowing.

your call for self-regulation is clearly disingenuous and not within your own frame work. I do enjoy that you even titled your essay after a quote from the most notorious Wall Street (the movie) villain, Gordon Gecko. "Greed is good, it keeps us honest" he tells shareholders, all while knowingly cheating them. Greed does not keep us honest and the idea of placing our futures on the good will of brokers is beyond staggering faith its lunacy. i do admire your idealism and faith in people, i share this faith, but it seems the nature of capitalism to undermine this goodness.

your call for self regulation seem both disingenuous and in contradiction with your entire thesis. You can't title your article after a quote of the most notorious Wall Street (the movie) villain Gordon Gecko who declares at the share holders meeting that "greed is good and keeps us honest" all while he is knowingly cheating them. Thank you for reminding us of that amazing movie however misplaced your agenda may be.

Although Mr. Zakaria didn???t express this in his article, I also construed his article to be particularly apropos to the modern climate change debate. I find all of the talk of competition in the energy space to be capitalism at its finest. The more I learn about electric company monopolies and how the electric rates get fixed (usually by state commissions based on capital expenditures), the more I believe that increased capitalism is exactly what we need.

Capitalism with a long term focus lines up well with morality. This has been expressed before as a tragedy of the commons. Overfishing a river might be good for short term GDP and a individual fisherman???s personal wealth. Overfishing a river to the point where no more fish live in the river is really bad for long term GDP and bad for all fishermen.

I write about this on my blog - http://ecoequilibrium.wordpress.com/ -Gerard Murphy

Although Mr. Zakaria didn't express this in his article, I also construed his article to be particularly apropos to the modern climate change debate. I find all of the talk of competition in the energy space to be capitalism at its finest. The more I learn about electric company monopolies and how the electric rates get fixed (usually by state commissions based on capital expenditures), the more I believe that increased capitalism is exactly what we need.

Capitalism with a long term focus lines up well with morality. This has been expressed before as a tragedy of the commons. Overfishing a river might be good for short term GDP and a individual fisherman???s personal wealth. Overfishing a river to the point where no more fish live in the river is really bad for long term GDP and bad for all fishermen.

I write about this on my blog http://ecoequilibrium.wordpress.com/ - Gerard Murphy

Before the Greek discovery of scientific method, people accepted supernatural causes. After the modernist rejection of scientific method, people, people accept subjective causes. Thus the pseudo-scientific claim that capitalism, ie, individual rights, is unstable because of alleged animal spirits, ie, emotions. This is not science but merely a modernist version of another religious absurdity, Original Sin.

Socialist control of money and banking, ie, legal tender and the Fed, with its counterfeiting of money, credit and interest rates, causes the "business" cycle. This govt counterfeiting moves thru the market like a pig thru a python, causing unsustainable investments (BOOM!) that necessarily fail in the non-Pragmatist, non-Keynsian long run (BUST!). Real money, credit and interest rates are the products of production for a market, not govt's hidden taxes for war and welfare. Trash the Fed. Back to gold. Free the financial industry.

See Rand, Mises, Hayek, and Oresme. Do not see Keynes.

Like cut up money? More currency collage at www.alternatingcurrency.com

Fareed, I've been thinking this way ever since our economy fell down the tubes, and no one has really said it until now. Thank you! I've always enjoyed reading your work because you have clarity of vision, are not prone to over-emotionalism or group-think, and over all, you are a realistic optimist -not an easy feat! Capitalism is not dead. Thank goodness. But our present circumstances present a wake-up call, and we shouldn't be falling victim to what Matt Miller calls "The Tyranny of Dead Ideas". Capitalism is still the best system for mankind, but like your car analogy, it needs to be driven with respect. We shouldn't be afraid of sensible regulations that still allow free market ideas and production but hinder the effects of economic implosions that cripple entire governments. I'm also very glad to see someone introduce capitalism to morality- they are not mutually exclusive, and things like integrity, honesty and pride in actual competitive production (not gaming the system, which is not the same thing) need to be taught to young business majors. Capitalism is very powerful and should be used for good. But when it is used carelessly and recklessly, we all suffer.

A terrific, complete over-all view on what has been going wrong with world economics. At the base of all that's ever gone wrong or can ever go wrong is the lack of ethics, moral values and therefore, the inability of the powers that be at every level to say no to short cut methods to grow rich. If lessons are well learnt this time, the, worldwide, the rich will no longer get richer at the cost of the poor getting poorer. Way to go Zakaria. I doff my imaginary hat at you for the clarity of thought in your well researched essay. Kanan Divecha, Mumbai, India

Hey Fareed! Nice article!
Beautiful artwork... I didn't agree with everything of course, but overall you've got some pretty good stuff there.
I noticed a couple of typos though. Figured I'd tell you guys about them, and although you can't edit the print copy, you could adjust the website version if you wanted.
page 2 "too large (to) be leveraged at 30 to 1" the (to) needs to be there
page 4 "toward a extraordinary" the a needs to be an (an)

I particularly liked your line, "Without better international coordination, there will be more crashes...".
Classic good chess, and I'd be honored if some of my work in some small way helped inspire such if/then propositional architecture.

By the way... last night after midnight when I first saw this article, I just had to run out and get a print version of the issue. Walgreens was out. The human degradation parade I saw upon my visit to Walmart also left me emptyhanded (I just had to walk in that place, didn't I?). They claimed Walmart doesn't ever sell Newsweek. Lucky for us I guess. I finally found 1 copy in a random Albertson's at 12:30. Went home, drank a Rogue and read it. Good times, hahaha.

It is almost too ironic. Marx presented capitalism as an ever reactionary force based on greed of the few and its requisite conservatism to hold on to power. Now we have a book in revolutionary soviet colors, with a copy cat title, favoring greed. The author is just too hip -- perectly mocking the cause he sets forth. Or.....could it be that he doesn't get it at all? Nah. Gotta say, Adam Smith's work was just what "stelleen" says. Justifying the implicit bruatilty of "holding on to power" has always been difficult for capitalists, hence, they infuse their conservatism with metaphysical beg-outs -- gambits to the evangelicals, evolutionary arguments (survival of the fittest), and, of course, Smith's "guiding hand" (it will, somehow cosmologically, all be "ok," in effect). The current version of "guiding hand" is "trickle down" and its irrational theorization by slave boys' for the massah, "supply side" theory. Smith and his ilk live yet today, because of the difficulty of justifying evil.

We've been drunk on borrowed money for a considerable time. We graduated from conspicuous consumption to conspicuous acquisition of money, greatly in excess of what was actually earned. As with most all of life's excesses, we will fall into the gutter and roll around in the empty bottles before arising from the squalor of excess. Morals will return to the marketplace as we confess our economic sins and rebuild a national economic life. Schools of business and law will return to the ethic which forms the framework for the succeeding successes. It's a cyclical thing.