I’m a 30-something man from Dallas, Texas. I became obsessed with computers at a young age (anyone remember learning to program in Logo on an Apple IIe?), and have been putting my geeky tendencies to work for Microsoft for the past 10 years. I’m also gay and have Objectivist philosophical leanings.
The point of this blog is to act as a personal archive of my thoughts on any subject of interest to me. That will mostly mean politics, economics, and philosophy, with the occasional foray into other subjects.
Why call it “the gay capitalist”? Because being gay and being a capitalist are often seen as contradictory. A gay man is supposed to adhere to the left end of the traditional left-right political spectrum, and the left is very anti-capitalist. However, I contend that capitalism is the only political system that makes sense for a gay man or anyone else, and that the only reason it is not embraced by gays is that the party that is most accepting of gays is very anti-capitalist. Of course, the ‘right’ is also not very capitalist anymore, so moving to the other end of the left-right spectrum doesn’t fix anything, even ignoring the fact that the right is very anti-gay.
Capitalism needs a new breed of defenders that do not fit into this left-right spectrum, and it should count gays among them.
Hey Spyro,
Obviously, I disagree that capitalism is the cause for social or environmental decay and destruction. A quick look at history reveals that the whole time humanity was mostly under the thumb of tyranny of various forms, starvation and death was the norm. As soon as capitalism entered the scene, the human population of the globe exploded. Now, the planet can support more human life than ever, as a direct result of capitalism.
I believe that the globe’s resources should be exploited for the betterment of human life, and that capitalism is the only resource allocation method that works. For instance, there is a lot of teeth-gnashing over oil, but the scarceness of oil is a self-correcting problem in a free market. As oil becomes scarcer, oil prices increase, and other forms of energy become more economically-viable. One only has to look at any communist country to see the results of policies that try to centrally manage resources.
Unfortunately, the United States is not a purely capitalist economic system. We are under what many call “crony capitalism”, whereby special interests pay the government to help them and hurt others, such as with the recent bank bailouts. This is why most libertarians argue for a separation of economics and state – so that it is impossible to pay the government to favor one person over another.
In any case, I can’t make a complete argument for capitalism in a blog comment, but I recommend visiting http://cato.org if you want to see more research on the benefits of capitalism and how we can fix our current government.
I’ve deleted your comments as you requested, but I left the responses. I think it was a productive discussion, and I hope you now understand where I’m coming from even if you disagree.
The economy is a type of ecosystem, and it is noteworthy that capitalism is what’s natural and organic. It’s the systems of communism and socialism that are artificial – they do not function organically.
It’s a strange dichotomy that those most committed to natural ecosystems free from “man-made artificial constructs” reputed to destroy that ecosystem… are so in favor of artificial constructs in the ecosystem of the economy.