Author Topic: Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism  (Read 1574 times)

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Offline Glock32

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Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism
« on: October 30, 2015, 02:45:40 PM »
This is a quite interesting article at Reason.com, interviewing the CEO of Whole Foods.  They may be perceived as a tree hugger hipster store, and indeed a major portion of their customer base are urban liberals, but they also clearly understand private enterprise.

I found this question and answer particularly illuminating:

Quote
reason: You believe capitalism is not only the greatest wealth creator but helps poor people get rich. But you see it as constantly being misrepresented, even by its champions. Why is capitalism under attack?

John Mackey: Intellectuals have always disdained commerce. That is something that tradesmen did—people that were in a lower class. Minorities oftentimes did it, like you had the Jews in the West. And when they became wealthy and successful and rose, then they were envied, they were persecuted and their wealth confiscated, and many times they were run out of country after country. Same thing happened with the Chinese in the East. They were great businesspeople as well.

So the intellectuals have always sided with the aristocrats to maintain a society where the businesspeople were kept down. You might say that capitalism was the first time that businesspeople caught a break. Because of Adam Smith and the philosophy that came along with that, the industrial revolution began this huge upward surge of prosperity.

reason: Is it a misunderstanding of what business does? Is it envy? Is it a lack of capacity to understand that what entrepreneurs do, or what innovators do, is take a bunch of things that might not be worth much separately and then they transform them? What is the root of the antagonism toward commerce?

Mackey: It's sort of where people stand in the social hierarchy. If you live in a more business-oriented society, like the United States has been, then you have these businesspeople, who [the intellectuals] don't judge to be very intelligent or well-educated, having lots of money—and they begin to buy political power with it, and they rise in the social hierarchy. Whereas the really intelligent people, the intellectuals, are less important. And I don't think they like that.

That's one of the main reasons the intellectuals have usually disdained commerce. They haven't seen it [as a] dynamic, creative force, because they measure themselves against these people, and they think they're superior, and yet in the social hierarchy they're not seen as more important. I think that drives them crazy.


I've long thought that the intellectual Left, despite their pretenses toward egalitarianism, are actually just the class of people who in previous eras represented the idle aristocracy.  What they share with aristocrats and the nobility of previous eras is an unearned sense of superior status.  Capitalism upsets that because it rewards success, it rewards merit, and it doesn't particularly care about the who, what, and how of the success.  It drives the liberal aristocracy mad to be so certain of their own cultural and intellectual superiority, while seeing industrious hoi polloi earning more.  Any social and economic system that fails to recognize their superiority, and reward them suitably for it, simply must be intrinsically flawed.  I believe this is what motivates the disdain they have for self-made men.  It's why they hurl blistering invective at wealthy Republicans like Mitt Romney and Donald Trump, even though the Democrats have even more millionaires.

I think it all ultimately boils down to the fact that they believe it is self-evident that they should be celebrated for their intellectual and cultural preening, and when they instead see examples to the contrary they insist that it is uncouth, tacky, avaricious, etc.  You should genuflect to their awesomeness.

http://reason.com/archives/2015/10/27/why-intellectuals-hate-capital/
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Online Pandora

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Re: Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism
« Reply #1 on: October 30, 2015, 03:47:31 PM »
The reason "intellectuals" hate the free market (proper term for Capitalism) is because the market places no value on what they have to offer -- blather -- and they have nothing to offer which the market might value.  It's envy.  Can't compete constructively so they seek to destroy instead.
"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." - Mark Twain

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Offline Weisshaupt

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Re: Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism
« Reply #2 on: October 30, 2015, 03:59:35 PM »
The reason "intellectuals" hate the free market (proper term for Capitalism) is because the market places no value on what they have to offer -- blather -- and they have nothing to offer which the market might value.  It's envy.  Can't compete constructively so they seek to destroy instead.

Covered at length in Sowell's book

http://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Society-Expanded-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465025226/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446238746&sr=8-1&keywords=sowell+intellectuals+and+society

Offline Libertas

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Re: Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism
« Reply #3 on: November 02, 2015, 07:45:52 AM »
The reason "intellectuals" hate the free market (proper term for Capitalism) is because the market places no value on what they have to offer -- blather -- and they have nothing to offer which the market might value.  It's envy.  Can't compete constructively so they seek to destroy instead.

BAM!  Nailed it!   ::thumbsup::

And for more on that destructive reaction...this Climate Change BS is all about destruction, primarily the destruction of what is left of the US!

And man, when we go under won't they be disappointed at a hollow carcass to plunder and miss the good old days, eh?
We are now where The Founders were when they faced despotism.