Hi John,

I’m glad we can agree on the actions of communist and socialist states being atrocious. I would like to enforce that the DSA - in their charter and beliefs - hold many of the same principles: removal of the private corporation, the abolition of capitalism, and a forced burden on some individuals on behalf of others.

Some of your other points about slavery, genocide, sweatshops, and murder are also in direct contrast to what capitalism proposes. Capitalism is not merely a strive for wealth or power; Smith, Friedman, Rand, Sowell, and Brook are some economic scholars that enforce this point. Capitalism focuses on the free will of the individual - the results of this free will are the individual’s own to confront, whether good or bad. It does not, however, ask that your free will to violate that of others it does the opposite. This is done on two levels: moral and economic. The moral consequences of such an infringement are blatantly obvious. The economic consequences of such action are less so, but they are still present. There is a reason the North became economically prosperous when slavery was abolished while the South was economically dismal; slaves became consumers (and employers), companies became accountable, and products were of great quality. The same conclusion is seen in South Africa where blacks were barred from entering some jobs, but because they were willing to work for less, they often outnumbered whites in the positions they were not even allowed to hold.

Workers in sweatshops evokes my sympathy, but it is important to realize that such jobs are often taken because they need to be. Workers would not enter such jobs unless it was critical to their survival - most workers would starve or be homeless if they did not take these jobs. Most people do not hold these jobs forever and can move out of poverty. Child labor is similar; this did not go away because it was outlawed, is dissipated in many countries because it was no longer necessary for children to work for their families. 200 years ago, at the birth of capitalism, there were only about 60 million people in the world who were not living in extreme poverty. Today there are more than 6.5 billion people who are not living in extreme poverty. Between 1990 and 2015 alone (in Thomas Piketty’s view the devastating years in which social inequality rose so sharply), 1.25 billion people around the world escaped extreme poverty — 50 million per year and 138,000 every day.

Regarding medical insurance, I do not disagree that the healthcare industry needs to be completely changed, but I would guess that we disagree on what this change is. We have no price transparency in healthcare. The price of an operation could be $40,000 or $400,000 depending on the hospital we go to. If the transparency of hospitals were greater, the costs of medical care would decrease (as patents are also consumers) and we would only pay for the healthcare of ourselves and our operations.

Again, capitalism is not about global conquest or authoritarian regimes. If someone wants wealth, capitalism provides them the system where the trade (capital for labor, goods, and services, etc) to accrue such wealth over time. This is done on the emphasis of individual rights.

I believe you and I would both disagree with conscription completely since it states that man’s life belongs to his country - or rather, his government. In free countries, soldiers normally have a choice on whether or not they want to fight.

This is incredibly long, but I hope you see where I am coming from. I stress many of these points throughout the later parts of the article.

Cheers, Adam