PB Daily | Is Capitalism a Killer?

[Palm Beach Daily]( Nick’s Note: At the Daily, we believe that free markets are the best way to run an economy. But what happens when the government interferes in free markets? Longtime PBRG friend Bill Bonner tackles that question below… Is Capitalism a Killer? By Bill Bonner, chairman, Bonner & Partners “You say capitalism never killed anyone… But who do you think makes all the guns and bombs?” The question came to us in the night, like a faint realization that we had forgotten to turn off the stove. But first, a look at the conversation so far. [Last Monday]( we took a backward glance at capitalism. The world has moved on so far for so long, we have to turn our head around and squint to see it. Almost everyone now agrees that capitalism cannot be trusted. People cannot be left alone to figure out how they will get along with one another. They can’t, for example, choose when, how, and where they will work together… or how much they will be paid for it. Now, every sizeable business must have an HR department—a group of people who look after its human resources… as if people could be reduced to carloads of coal or buckets or sacks of cement. The HR people make sure that the rules are followed. If an employee works more than 40 hours per week, he must be paid overtime, for example. And don’t forget the bathrooms; they must be accessible to cripples… and they must be transgender-friendly. It’s the law! Recommended Link [Less than 10 people in the world know about this]( True breakthroughs rarely happen in the world of market trading... But [this is one of them](. Developed in secrecy over five years, it's a [never-before-seen indicator]( of short-term stock profit opportunities. Only a handful of people know about this data-proven 93.5%-accurate way of picking future market wins... But now we're throwing back the veil on it - so that YOU can get rich. Discover it now by... [Clicking here]( - Whips and Harnesses For more than 100 years in the U.S., politicians, cronies, and do-gooders have been working to improve capitalism. Are the capitalists unwilling to make mortgage loans in one neighborhood at the same rates as in others? We’ll pass a law forcing them to! Are capitalists reluctant to fund the Deep State’s deficits? We’ll fund them ourselves with made-up money from the Fed! Do they allow smoking in their bars? We’ll put a stop to that! Every apparent shortcoming… every slip-up… every grievance against the great workhorse of capitalism has been met with whips and harnesses. Now, the animal is so trussed up by regulation… and so weighted down by all the cronies on its back and zombies and freeloaders in the wagon behind it, it can barely pull ahead. Despite all the technological breakthroughs that have come along in our lifetime, real GDP growth has slowed to barely half the rate of the 1960s. And the typical working man, who used to be the backbone of the whole economy, has actually lost income and status over the last four decades. Household incomes continued to rise, but only because more women have joined the workforce. What that did to family cohesion, satisfaction, and quality of life, generally, we don’t know. But it was not necessarily a plus. Still, whenever there is a problem—real or imagined—Deep State apologists fault the free market. And so it was that professor Robert Kuttner of Brandeis University came forward to lay the blame for Donald Trump’s election on capitalism. We took a look at Kuttner’s idea last Monday… we come back today to elaborate. Recommended Link [The Next Evolution of Bitcoin Is Going to Mint a New Class of Millionaires - But 99% of People Have No Idea What's About To Happen...]( [Click here for the full story]( -- You Get What You Pay For Politics produced the great calamities of the 20th century—World War I, World War II, the Soviet Union, and Mao; capitalism brought forth automobiles, air-conditioning, TV, and wall-to-wall carpeting. The political disasters cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars. The business breakthroughs added wealth… and, presumably, satisfaction. But Kuttner says that capitalism is cruel! He claims that it causes such pain that voters turn to “strongmen” rulers with simplistic plans to remedy capitalism’s failures, such as the aforementioned Mr. Trump. “Build a wall,” says the president. The improvers—whether they’re Trumpistas or liberal democrats—claim to be breeding a kinder, gentler strain of capitalism, by mating it with Obamacare and trade barriers. Recommended Link [New tool could disrupt the entire $8 trillion food industry]( Scientists recently discovered a new tool hidden in billion-year-old bacteria that could disrupt the entire $8 trillion global food industry... This could mean 35X growth for the industry at the center of this new technology. [Click here to learn more]( -- But what they are really doing is interfering with the win-win deals that get people what they really want. You only know what they want when they are free to tell you… and they are only free to tell you when the feds don’t have a gun to their heads. The more interference—as we saw magnificently illustrated in the Russians’ 70-year experiment with a command economy—the less people get what they really want. Instead, what they get is violence, claptrap, and misery. Returning to our initial question, the crowning charm of capitalism is its indifference. It doesn’t care whether people in bad neighborhoods get mortgages at low rates or not. It doesn’t give a hoot whether or not someone is smoking… or even what is done with the guns and bombs it produces. It is deaf to both the whimpers of suffering humans… and to their murmurs of happiness. It merely responds to their desires. More precisely, it responds to money. “You get what you pay for,” said Milton Friedman. And the key to getting what you want is to pay for it yourself. If you turn over your money to the feds… you’ll get what they want—crony deals, paperwork, calamitous wars, assassinations, expensive boondoggles, and assault rifles. That is what has happened over the last 40 years—more and more of the nation’s GDP has been directly spent, controlled, or heavily diddled by the feds. And since 1971, the feds have been allowed to create their own money—out of thin air—to give them even more purchasing power. Capitalism doesn’t care what happens to the bombs it makes; it only cares who pays for them. The feds, flush with money, buy a lot of them. Capitalists buy none. Regards, Bill Bonner Chairman, Bonner & Partners Nick’s Note: Last year, Bill was kind enough to send me a bottle of Tacana Malbec from his vineyard in Argentina. It’s a manly wine full of intense Malbec flavor with a slight jammy finish. It paired perfectly with the steak I had that night. Bill’s just released this year’s vintage. And I highly recommend you try it. You can order a case of Bill’s Legendary Gualfin Tacana Malbec [right here]( And if you don’t think it’s the best Malbec you’ve ever tasted, Bill says he’ll send you your money back. No questions asked. So, the very worst that could happen is that you drink Bill’s wine at his expense. You can’t lose. Bill only has 3,300 bottles of Tacana Malbec in stock. And last year, he sold out in less than 24 hours. So don’t delay—it won’t last long. [Order your case today]( IN CASE YOU MISSED IT… A reclusive millionaire has sparked outrage as his honest guide to surviving modern America goes viral. 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