Reply #220: People vote with their feet

[Nederland]

The success of "Capitalism" is no mystery--people vote with their feet. The reason that free markets have reached the position they have today is not the result of some vast pseudo-conspiracy. It is the result of people moving to systems that work, and voting into power people that back systems that work. Marxists can never get past the indisputable fact that people, when given a choice, almost always choose to live in a non-Marxist state.

I place "Capitalism" in quotes because in reality Capitalism failed too. That is another reality that Marxists never understand. Capitalism didn't win, Marxism didn't win--they both lost. No place in the world where people want to live is 100% Marxist or 100% Capitalist. Rather, a consensus has been reached that the best system is hybrid, neither Capitalist nor Marxist. A quick survey of developed countries reveals that the world is slowly reaching a consensus about what the "best" system looks like and it is a hybrid system where the ratio of the private economy to the public economy is somewhere between 75%/25% and 65%/35%. In the US (one of the most "Capitalist" systems) about 20% of economic activity takes place in the public sphere. In Sweden (one of the most "Socialist" systems) about 40% of economic activity takes place in the public sphere. Moreover, the US and Sweden are moving toward each other. I suspect in a few decades we will see a convergence of sorts where the world has settled on just what aspects of an economy should be in the public sphere and what aspects should be privatized. Perhaps then all this ridiculous talk about who "won" the ideological debate will end, but I doubt it.