Capitalism Saved the Miners

I'm not going to bother to track down the source of every contribution to this effort, so I may have a few of the details wrong, but doesn't it seem like you could also write this article exactly the other way?

* The mining company is essentially bankrupt and relied extensively on multinational government efforts to extract the miners, provide logistical support, etc.

* The Chilean government is now providing physical and mental medical care.

* It seems like one of the first stories that broke about this incident was the company saying "we can't afford to pay these guys while they are trapped. please help". The Chilean government (or possibly a miner's union) likely provided some of the money the miner's families lived off of the past 70 days and that they'll use in the coming weeks as the miners recover.

* The escape capsule was designed, built and contributed by NASA.

* NASA advised the Chilean government (who was coordinating the rescue effort) on how to keep the miners physically and mentally fit.

etc.

That's a fun headline and all, but the Worker's Weekly News could run a similar story under the heading "Collective Action, Big Gov't Saved the Miners".

I can't resist making a point about "capitalism" and "socialism." Rand used to identify certain terms and ideas as "anti-concepts," that is, terms that actually function to obscure our understanding rather than facilitating it, making it harder for us to grasp other, legitimate concepts; one important category of anti-concepts is what Rand called the "package deal," referring to any term whose meaning conceals an implicit presupposition that certain things go together that in actuality do not. Although Rand would not agree with the following examples, I've become convinced that the terms "capitalism" and "socialism" are really anti-concepts of the package-deal variety.

Libertarians sometimes debate whether the "real" or "authentic" meaning of a term like "capitalism" is (a) the free market, or (b) government favoritism toward business, or (c) the separation between labor and ownership, an arrangement neutral between the other two; Austrians tend to use the term in the first sense; individualist anarchists in the Tuckerite tradition tend to use it in the second or third.[12] But in ordinary usage, I fear, it actually stands for an amalgamation of incompatible meanings.

Suppose I were to invent a new word, "zaxlebax," and define it as "a metallic sphere, like the Washington Monument." That's the definition — "a metallic sphere, like the Washington Monument." In short, I build my ill-chosen example into the definition. Now some linguistic subgroup might start using the term "zaxlebax" as though it just meant "metallic sphere," or as though it just meant "something of the same kind as the Washington Monument." And that's fine. But my definition incorporates both, and thus conceals the false assumption that the Washington Monument is a metallic sphere; any attempt to use the term "zaxlebax," meaning what I mean by it, involves the user in this false assumption. That's what Rand means by a package-deal term.

Now I think the word "capitalism," if used with the meaning most people give it, is a package-deal term. By "capitalism" most people mean neither the free market simpliciter nor the prevailing neomercantilist system simpliciter. Rather, what most people mean by "capitalism" is this free-market system that currently prevails in the western world. In short, the term "capitalism" as generally used conceals an assumption that the prevailing system is a free market. And since the prevailing system is in fact one of government favoritism toward business, the ordinary use of the term carries with it the assumption that the free market is government favoritism toward business.

And similar considerations apply to the term "socialism." Most people don't mean by "socialism" anything so precise as state ownership of the means of production; instead they really mean something more like "the opposite of capitalism." Then if "capitalism" is a package-deal term, so is "socialism" — it conveys opposition to the free market, and opposition to neomercantilism, as though these were one and the same.

And that, I suggest, is the function of these terms: to blur the distinction between the free market and neomercantilism. Such confusion prevails because it works to the advantage of the statist establishment: those who want to defend the free market can more easily be seduced into defending neomercantilism, and those who want to combat neomercantilism can more easily be seduced into combating the free market. Either way, the state remains secure.

Source: http://mises.org/daily/2099

This is a very strange article. It seems to be mostly a generic rant, with a very thin topical hook to give him a reason to republish the rant today. Pretty bad even by the standards of the WSJ editorial page; reads like the mirror image of a DailyKos editorial, with generic political invective and a poor command of the facts.

edit: Looked up his past contributions, and... he has some pretty unusual views. One of his previous columns seems to be arguing that atheists are destroying capitalism, because capitalism needs the morality that religion provides in order to work. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122714101083742715.html)

Wait, what? Capitalism put them in the fucking mine.

{stuff_I_hate} put the miners into the mine.

{stuff_I_like} got them out.

Yay! I've scored the most political points, I win!

I could have gotten long-winded and torn this marvel of political propaganda apart at many levels, but the author did the bulk of the work for me in a few short sentences...

"Seeing the disaster, Center Rock's president, Brandon Fisher, called the Chileans to offer his drill. Chile accepted. The miners are alive."

Wait! He didn't CHARGE Chile for the use of the drill?!?! Where's the capitalism here again? Sounds more like humanitarianism and generosity to me.

Capitalism != Innovation, although it can create an environment where innovation is rewarded.

I'd love to hear what he'd have to say about Sputnik.

This article is foolish. From a previos thread on HN: NASA Helped the design the escape capsule. (Government) Chliean Navy built it and so on... (Government)

lots of things had to happen for this rescue to be successful so claiming that any economic system has more success because of it is just stupid.

If there were only 4 of them they would have been dead by now, next time you need at least 50 of them to make any newsworthy and thus commercial interest.

By the way, all capitalism en all socialism is both bad, healthy societies are a mixture of both as commercial interest mostly cannibalize their infrastructure (that is where the extra money comes from) so you need a social system to be able to have commercial interests thrive while upholding the infrastructure needed to do that.