We are in an imperfect world

Though there are a lot of criticism on entrepreneurs and free market system, I want to claim that thanks to capitalism and entrepreneurs, lots of goods that were luxuries decades before have now been our daily necessities, such as TVs and cars. Once I was sitting in my father’s Audi SUV and my dad suddenly turned to me, “When I was about your age, I had never thought of having a car because at that time only government officials could have a car.” Now, we are several times richer than before. But if we just pay attention to the service we get, (for example, we can take public transportation rather than own a private car), we will be infinitely richer. Just as Johan Norberg concludes in his book In defense of global capitalism:  During 1000 years of absolute monarchy, feudalism and slavery, mankind’s average income increased by about 50 percent. In the 180 years since 1820, mankind’s average income has increased by almost 1000 percent.

Sometimes people make judgments based on what they have seen and take it for granted that what they call for will have a good consequence, but sometimes good intentions lead to unintended consequences. Some people with a high morality refuse to buy clothes produced by workers in third-world countries because these workers have a miserable wage. The customers thus call for improvement in these workers’ living standard. What’s seen is the improvement of this particular group of people but what’s not seen is that: a higher cost of production leads to a higher price, which makes the clothes produced by third-world countries no loner competitive; resources that could have been used more efficiently in other fields are shifted to make clothes, etc. People who make judgments based on immediacy and immediacy will fail to see the long-run effect of the policies they call for. But unfortunately, we often make decisions without scrutiny. The public is easily misinformed because of the meaningless data and call for poison which made them sick in the first place.

Finally, we should admit that we are living in a world full of scarcity. Life is not a video game, in which we can cheat and get infinite resources. Marxists like to compare a perfect socialism in utopia with an imperfect capitalism in real world. It’s safe to say that capitalism is not a panacea to every country, and free market itself has many problems like externalities, but it’s still the best choice for officials to adopt compared with other kinds of systems in a world with scarce resources because capitalism respects human nature and protects property rights: all the trades are voluntary and no people have to sacrifice their nature rights like freedom.