Private Property Prevents the Law of the Jungle This could not result from "dog eat dog" competition. One of many ways this is revealed is the vast increases in leisure that markets have made possible, while real incomes dramatically increased at the same time. In fact, capitalism gives everyone - particularly the weakest, whom it is accused of harming - the best chance not just to survive but to thrive. In enriching most those who are most productive, capitalism allows the survival of billions of people who would not otherwise have survived. As Sheldon Richman summarized it, "If under capitalism only the fit survive, it seems to have a knack for making people fit." Over the past two centuries, roughly six times as many people have been enabled to survive on the earth, with dramatically longer lifespans, as well. That means that virtually all survive better, making capitalism dramatically anti-Darwinian. And the less it is hampered, the better it achieves those results, without violating individual liberty. The wealth and technology that capitalism creates - e.g., the medical miracles that now routinely save previously "unfit" people - demonstrate that capitalism's benefits are not restricted to the fittest.Ĭapitalism, even when undermined and hampered by government intervention, has no peer when it comes to providing more abundant, and therefore cheaper, goods and services for all. The most obvious error of the "survival of the fittest" view of capitalism is that markets - even ones as hindered by regulation, taxation, etc., as they are now - dramatically expand the number of people who are fit enough to survive. To view capitalism as "dog eat dog" social Darwinism, in which only the very fittest survive at everyone else's expense, is not only erroneous, but in several ways, the exact opposite of the truth. While such assertions meet the low standards of proof used by those who wish to override market results with ones they will dictate, anything approaching close logical scrutiny reveals them as baseless. Libertarians who advocate a free market are therefore called "Social Darwinists" who wish to exterminate the weak for the benefit of the strong. The free-market economy, they charge, is "the rule of the jungle," where "survival of the fittest" is the law.
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