Capitalism curing virus, government is making it worse
It seems wherever you go on the left, you can find a hot take about how free market capitalism is endangering the world at a time when we need unprecedented wartime like planning and coordination. New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio argued, “This is a case for a nationalization, literally a nationalization, of crucial factories and industries that could produce the medical supplies to prepare this country for what we need.”
The Atlantic published a think-piece arguing “There Are No Libertarians In An Epidemic.” Mic. com joined in with a similar message, and the further-left Jacobin Magazine and The Nation both argued that now more than ever we need to socialize medicine. And of course such takes abound in exponential amounts on social media.
The truth is just the opposite. In China, America, and nations around the globe, catastrophic government failures have allowed this virus to become a crisis, and it’s businesses that are successfully stepping up to save lives.
President Trump brought attention to many such cases in a news conference. Honeywell is opening two new manufacturing facilities to produce N95 masks, eventually leading to five times their current production. Jockey International is stepping up production of medical gowns and donated 10,000 scrubs to frontline medical workers in New York. United Technologies donated 90,000 pieces of personal protective equipment to FEMA. MyPillow is converting its call centers to help with the pandemic and is converting 75 percent of its manufacturing to producing facemasks.
Additionally, Facebook is donating 720,000 N95 masks, Goldman Sachs 600,000, and Apple 10 million. Meanwhile, the federal government had 1.5 million of them sitting in a warehouse, incapable of figuring out how to release them in a timely manner.
Similar stories are occurring around the world. In the United Kingdom, vacuum tycoon James Dyson designed an entirely new ventilator and is manufacturing 15,000 of them. In Japan, Sharp has converted TV factories to produce surgical masks. Foxconn the same in China.
While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was producing defective test kits (and in insufficient numbers), private companies like LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics stepped up to develop and rush to market functional test kits. That’s according to reporting from The New York Times.
Where our government has stepped in to take positive action, it has often failed miserably. The federal coronavirus bill provided $25 million to keep the Kennedy Center operational, yet even with that massive amount they’ve laid off staff, leading lawmakers to try to claw back the subsidy.
In New York, the state government is experimenting with exactly what Mayor DeBlasio wanted: nationalizing the production of hand sanitizer. Gov. Andrew Cuomo claims they can produce it cheaper than private enterprise. How is that possible? Modern slave labor. They’re paying prisoners 16 cents an hour to produce the product.
The most successful government interventions to help in this crisis seem to have been getting out of the way. Americans for Tax Reform has logged more than 250 regulations that have been waived to help with the crisis, many of which it’s baffling why they ever existed. That includes waiving regulations that prevented the development of telemedicine, now more necessary than ever.
This freeing of enterprise to fight in this crisis is a clear story of the success of capitalism. And none of the above even mentioned the everyday examples we take for granted of how capitalism has made living in this time possible. We have Amazon, Postmates, and more making it possible to survive without needing to go out. We have the internet and phones allowing us to stay connected with our friends and family. We have computer technologies allowing many of us to continue our employment remotely. Imagine how much worse the unemployment crisis would be without capitalism.
To pick this time of all times to say the free markets is failing us is sheer lunacy.
Joseph (Jake) Klein is a film producer and founder of Dangerous Documentaries, a division of the Capital Research Center. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.