Free-market capitalism is a system Americans often take for granted, including those who actively defend it against socialism. That makes it all the more important to remember what it actually delivers, and why.
Socialism depends on a charismatic politician promising what government will deliver: greater equality, affordable necessities, higher wages, and prosperity for all. What ultimately arrives, of course, rarely resembles the original sales pitch, but someone with power announced a direct plan to try to make things better.
Capitalism works in the opposite way. It does not rely on someone promising abundance, cheaper goods and services, economic growth, or greater freedom. It gives people the freedom and incentive to create those things for themselves, to build businesses, compete, innovate, and adapt to what others need. Because capitalism does not advertise its achievements with campaign speeches, its successes often become invisible.
Problems, meanwhile, are impossible to miss. The dynamic becomes even more complicated when government “solutions” create new problems of their own. But because no one promised to create those problems, the blame lands on free markets. When prices rise or basic necessities become harder to afford, it is easy to blame capitalism rather than ask whether government intervention, bad policy, or genuine scarcity played a role. That is part of why socialism is again gaining popularity on the Left.
Emma Camp, a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, has gone viral for offering simple reminders of the capitalist achievements Americans too often take for granted. She recently shared another example: the modern American grocery store.
If you want evidence that capitalism is a force for good, just visit a grocery store.
— Emma Camp (@emmma_camp_) August 31, 2026
My ode to the humble American supermarket, for @WSJFreeEx pic.twitter.com/BffCflszHE
"I love grocery stores. And they might just explain why capitalism is how we get the most economic prosperity for the most people. The modern grocery store is a marvel that we take for granted," Camp explained. "Food from all over the world in quantities that would have stunned our ancestors. Fifty different kinds of rice, blueberries, in January, whatever this is, thousands of products all competing against one another for your dollars."
The product is simple. How we get there is not. Hundreds of thousands of people, from different countries, backgrounds, and cultures, work across an enormous supply chain, often without ever knowing one another and without government-imposed central coordination, to get food into American grocery stores. The result is abundance and relatively affordable goods for consumers, along with a livelihood for the farmers, truckers, warehouse workers, processors, grocers, and countless others who make it possible.
Camp went on:
"When Soviet leader Boris Yeltsin visited America in 1989, he was so stunned by the variety and abundance of food available in a typical Texan grocery store that he was rendered speechless. He later wrote that visiting a grocery store made him sick with despair for the Soviet people and said that he believed there would be a revolution if people in the Soviet Union knew what the average American grocery store had to offer," she said.
"In 1950, Americans spent more than 20 percent of their disposable income on food. Now that number is more like 10 percent. Yes, groceries have been getting more expensive, but that's mainly due to inflation caused by government spending and tariffs."
"While it's totally understandable that people are focusing on recent price hikes, that doesn't mean the solution is more government intervention," Camp added. "Ultimately, capitalism encourages innovation and progress so food producers have become more innovative and more productive and the American people have benefited."
And yet, there is a growing bipartisan consensus that government intervention is the answer. On the left, that takes the form of increasingly open calls for socialism. On the right, it appears as protectionism, price-gouging rhetoric, and demands for government to police prices. Ironically, the right’s version may be more dangerous. It accepts the socialist diagnosis, that markets and profit are the problem, then offers a socialist remedy without calling it one.
Free markets do not come with a politician promising to deliver paradise. They do something more difficult and more valuable. They allow millions of people, pursuing their own interests and responding to the needs of others, to solve problems no government could fully anticipate or control.
So the American grocery store is easy to take for granted. It is quiet. It does not make explicit promises, offer grand plans, or possess the charisma of a politician. It simply works, so reliably that Americans often notice it only when something goes wrong.
That is precisely why free markets should not be abandoned. Americans should not need a flashy sales pitch to recognize a system that solves problems, creates abundance, and improves lives. They should be wary of trading that system for one that merely knows how to make a promise.
