The New York democratic socialist representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, once hailed by the Democratic National Committee Chairman as the "future of the our party" spoke this weekend at the South by Southwest Conference (sponsored by corporations Capital One, Mercedes Benz, Smart.com, Bud Light, Uber Eats, Uber, Verizon, and an electric scooter company called Jump), warning Americans that capitalism is an "irredeemable" system because of its damaging effects on the environment and its supposed focus on profit instead of people.
via Bloomberg News:
“Capitalism is an ideology of capital –- the most important thing is the concentration of capital and to seek and maximize profit,” Ocasio-Cortez said. And that comes at any cost to people and to the environment, she said, “so to me capitalism is irredeemable.”
Though she said she doesn’t think all parts of capitalism should be abandoned, “we’re reckoning with the consequences of putting profit above everything else in society. And what that means is people can’t afford to live. For me, it’s a question of priorities and right now I don’t think our model is sustainable.”
SXSW is an annual gathering in Austin, TX dedicated to celebrating the "the convergence of the interactive, film, and music industries. Fostering creative and professional growth alike, SXSW® is the premier destination for discovery."
Given that SXSW is a learning opportunity, perhaps Rep. Ocasio-Cortez can take the moment to be educated by economic philosopher and technological guru, George Gilder on what truly drives capitalism. Gilder's main theory is that capitalism is based not on greed, but instead on creativity and information flow. As Gilder has previously said, "Creativity is the foundation of wealth. All progress comes from the creative minority. Under capitalism, wealth is less a stock of goods than a flow of ideas, the defining characteristic of which is surprise. If it were not surprising, we could plan it, and socialism would work.”
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Gilder recently told Mark Levin, the problem with progressivism is that liberals believe they can predict the future. "The future is unpredictable...In order to deal with it successfully you have to learn, and learning has a lot of constraints...Learning is the heart of capitalism," he said. "Learning is finding out things you don't already know."
The only system that allows for this surprise is capitalism, not central planning or socialism. Thus, Gilder adds that "creativity is the foundation of capitalism...and socialism is based on planning. It's based on the assumption that we'd already know all we need to know in order to plan our future, and so it leads to tyranny, and that's really the difference. Liberty versus tyranny as someone once put it."
Likewise, the idea that capitalism does not help the poorest among us is incorrect. As reported by the Daily Wire, capitalism has moved more people out of poverty than any other system in the world.
via Daily Wire:
"Poverty worldwide included 94 percent of the world's population in 1820. In 2011, it was only 17 percent. What is even more incredible is that the global poverty rate was 53 percent in 1981, causing the decline from 53 percent to 17 percent to be "the most rapid reduction in poverty in world history."
"Since the onset of industrialisation – and as a consequence of this, economic growth — the share of people living in poverty started decreasing and kept on falling ever since," wrote Oxford University's Martin Roeser, who compiled the aforementioned data.
As for environmentalism, history shows that it is capitalist societies which care more for the environment than socialist nations and current data shows Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal" proposal certainly would not address climate change.
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