Thesis: A moral defense of capitalism.
Premises:
1. Each thing is a thing. A thing is something, a thing is itself, and a thing is what it is. A thing is a thing in itself, a thing as such. Each thing has a nature, as what it is. The nature of a thing is the set of principles which explain how and why it is what it is and how and why it behaves as it does. Every thing has a nature, although the specific nature of a thing is subject to the specific domain to which it belongs, for example, science, math, history, philosophy, politics, psychology, etc. This understanding of the general nature of things is metaphysics. A thing’s nature can be studied and analyzed and known by reason and logic. The human mind observes things, and infers general principles from those things, and then applies those principles to other things, and, because knowledge is general and abstract and not limited to specifics, it covers cases outside of the immediate awareness or perception of the one who knows. This is epistemology.
2. Objective ethics is ethics that is based on objective facts about what things are and about what exists. If a belief is objectively true, then acting in accordance with and pursuant to that belief is the objectively right way to act. This is ethics.
3. Capitalism is the economic system where a person owns the results of their actions and of their choices as private property, and each person has the freedom to act as they choose, and to make their own decisions and to then act out those decisions, within the realm of economics and in the sense of economic action, which is generally concerned with material objects in the physical world. This is economics.
Deduction:
4. A human is a type of thing.
5. Humans have a human nature. Humans are humans.
6. Because humans are humans, humans have free will.
7. Because humans have free will, humans are personally responsible for themselves.
8. Because humans are personally responsible for themselves, each person should do the work to make the money to support themselves and live their lives.
9. Because each human should do the work to make the money to support themselves to live their lives, that is a component of the successful life, and is therefore a component of the good life, of the ethical life.
10. Because making money to support one’s life is a component of an ethical life, it follows that rational self-interest, as a desire to make enough money to live an ethical or moral life, is itself ethical and moral.
11. Money is made by doing work, thinking and reasoning and intelligence about how best to get work done, and making decisions for which one takes personal responsibility against the indecisiveness or outright stupidity that might prevent work from getting done. As such, the human mind, and the human ego, are the means of making money.
12. Capitalism is the economic system that best enables a person to make the money to support themselves to live their lives, by giving them the freedom to work, and the freedom to think, and the freedom to reap the rewards of their hard work and of their intellectual thought.
13. This is true because in capitalism the individual owns private property. Private property results from a person’s actions to do work and think thoughts, to create and trade and buy and sell economic value, which manifests itself as privately owned money or private property. Property results from actions, and actions result from choices, so private property is the means by which a person can reap the rewards or obtain the failures of their choices, their actions, and their free will.
14. Capitalism is also the only economic system that gives a person the freedom to make decisions as an individual, which decisions control that individual’s own life and actions, by granting individual freedom of choice and of action in the economic realm instead of government’s or society’s control over the individual.
15. Thus, in capitalism, a person can use their free will to make choices, have the freedom to act out those choices, and then take ownership of those choices as private property. Private property and economic profits or losses are the material physical manifestations of personal accountability and self-responsibility for one’s own actions. Capitalism represents the morality of getting what you deserve and of earning what you own. Therefore, if it is fair and just to get what you deserve, or to own what you earned, then capitalism is moral.
16. Capitalism enables an ethics where making good choices gets good results, for an individual, and be rewarded by economic profit, or making bad choices causes bad results, for which that individual, alone, will be held accountable by financial loss.
17. Therefore, capitalism aligns with the most ethical human mode of life.
18. Therefore, capitalism has moral integrity to the conditions of life under which it is possible for a person to live a life which has moral integrity to their human nature, to what they are. Capitalism operates in accordance with and pursuant to human nature, and to the nature of the ethical life.
19. Therefore, capitalism has moral integrity.
20. Therefore, capitalism is moral and ethical.
Conclusion:
21. Capitalism is the best economic system for humans because of human nature, and is therefore ethical for humans, and this was proved by reason and logic, which is based on the nature of objective reality. Indeed, capitalism, democracy, and freedom, as a political and economic system, can be seen as a reflection of the metaphysical fact that humans have free will and are therefore self-responsible for their actions and choices. A system that enables humans to be humans, and which provides for humans to live life as humans, is good, for humans, not merely in a practical sense, but good as ethics and morality and virtue. Capitalism, democracy, and freedom, is a politics and economics which reflects the ethics of human free will and is pursuant to and in accordance with human nature, and therefore accords with the principle that a thing is itself, and, therefore, that humans are humans, because it is only for humans, as humans, that the question exists of what economic system should we choose. This is good and ethical and virtuous, because, as moral agents with free will, we deserve to own the rewards, or reap the punishments, of our choices and actions, and that is justice and fairness, and capitalism is virtuous for being fair and just.
22. Capitalism is morally defensible and ethically justified.
Counterarguments:
23. This argument has been attacked in several areas: that individuals are not, in fact, personally individually responsible for everything that happens to them. But, to say this, reduces to the claim that the individual does not truly have free will. Objectivism says that each person has free will.
24. It has also been attacked by saying that groups, not individuals, make money, and that economic production is a social activity, not an individual activity, or is done by muscle and sweat and labor and brute force, not by refined thinking and intelligence and reason.
25. Brute force, without reason, could only accomplish what a caveman or a primitive civilization could accomplish; it could build pyramids by an army of slaves, but it could never land a rocket on the moon, or find ways to treat diseases. Science and technology come from reason and logic, and the role that these play in business, is an example of the extent to which reason and logic magnify the effort of brute strength, for purposes of making money. Analytically, a human has no other tools that his body, hands, and brain, with which to do work, and work gets done, so these must have been the tools which got the work done.
26. To say that economic production is social, not individual, proves nothing, because when action is done by a group, it is done by a group of individuals acting as a group, so, even if the group achieved something, each individual would have earned a share in proportion to what they contributed to the group effort. A person has free will, a person makes choices, so, to the extent that an economic actor is a moral actor or an ethical actor, that ethical and moral agent is the individual.
27. There is the argument that objective ethics does not exist, and ethics is inherently irrational and subjective, or that objective reality does not exist, and objective truth does not exist. This position collapses into an absurdity, because, if that were true, then anything goes, and no one could ever know which economic system was better or worse, or what was right or wrong, so ethics would not exist and economics would not exist, and the question of the need for a moral defense of capitalism would not exist.
