Tag: The Capitalist Manifesto

The Comeback of Adam Smith Capitalism: What the economy will look like beyond 2024

Included here is a picture of Adam Smith from Scotland, where his Wealth of Nations was born, which I consider one of the most outstanding books ever written. It just so happens to be about economics and is the secret sauce to America’s great economy and why it has been at the top of the world. Many countries have many more people in them or even have more mineral resources. But for some reason, America has produced more economic wealth than any other place, anywhere, at any time. Even with all the big government restrictions that come from these socialist intrusions over the last century, significant government types have tried to ride the camel of productivity while at the same time imposing Marxism on them. America still outproduces the rest of the world in fundamental, economic value. So, the Wealth of Nations is an essential book written in 1776. But I also keep talking about Johan Norberg’s recent 2023 book, The Capitalist Manifesto, because it’s a really good book. Not necessarily from a conservative American perspective. But he’s from Sweden and he talks about IKEA a lot, but from a European liberalized mindset, he’s preaching the benefits of capitalism that I thought the left would never dare utter. And he’s doing it in an effort to save the concept of globalism from its massive failure of attaching itself to global communism. He sees, much the way Adam Smith tried to convince everyone, that capitalism is the best means of helping the most people, and in The Capitalist Manifesto, Norberg puts forth in a written and non-boring way, all the benefits capitalism has brought to the world over time and makes his case for everyone to get it for reference to the future of all global economies.

A statue of Adam Smith in Scotland

I was an economics major in college, but I was miserable. They were teaching Marxism, and I was far away from that vantage point, so it was painful, and through most of my adult life, I have worked in the opposite direction of all academics. I also found Adam Smith’s work to be my favorite, and I have rejected all forms of Keynesian economics from centralized authorities, which Smith also argued against. And over the years to feed my sentiments, I have enjoyed the work of Ayn Rand because as a Russian who lost everything to communism in her home country and had to flee to America to have a shot at a decent life, she understood Adam Smith too. But I was always the odd person over in the corner standing against the tide of globalism that we were all told was going to move in a noticeably communist direction, with China being the model that globalism created. So I can’t tell you how happy I am to have lived long enough to see that whole Marxist empire die in front of our faces. You could see the last gasp of it when Xi from China visited Biden in San Francisco late in 2023 for a kind of communist summit. Globalism was trying hard to show that they had reached the finish line. But due to populism yearning for Adam Smith capitalism, the water is flowing through their cupped hands fast, to the point where soon there will be nothing left to drink from. Looming in the background of all this political activity is the return from exile of President Trump, he has a vicious plan to end globalism as it has been proposed, and economic advocates like Johan Norberg see the writing on the wall, that if the world of liberals wish to save their hard work at establishing globalism, that they were going to have to throw the towel in and adapt capitalism, quickly.

I do read many books, about three of them the size of Norberg’s book a week.  But after I got through The Capitalist Manifesto about a third of the way, I considered it the most important book about economics since Adam Smith.  And I say that knowing that Norberg and I would likely see eye to eye on very little, politically.  But this book is a glaring admission that I know a lot of my old college professors would probably commit suicide over.  I would get so angry at their sheer stupidity that I would jump into just about every risky business proposal that came my way to shake off the stink of it all.  But I learned a lot in the process that is what we might say, unique to the present marketplace.  So, it all worked out in the end.  And I can see where Norberg is going even as the people on the political side of Norberg found Ayn Rand to be the incarnation of the Devil in all the details.  This was all a mainstream admission that the only way to save global markets was to adopt capitalism, purely and without much micromanagement, which is a massive statement from any economic circle.  It’s one that I have known about for decades, and it cost me much trouble to be on the side of pure markets while the rest of the world was moving toward various degrees of Marxism, from the stock market to the making of plastic baseballs in China. 

So, boys and girls, this is the question of the century, the answer all wrapped up into one, and the reason that Norberg published his book at this particular time.  What happens in 2024 and 2025 and beyond economically?  Norberg is not a populist, and he is not a fan of President Trump.  Yet, Trump is the leader of the political world, all over the world, despite all these attempts by globalists to keep their dead duck alive by trying to destroy Trump.  And revenge is coming once he is president again, and the last threads of globalism are as good as gone.  The entire plot of the World Economic Forum and their paper tiger of China will disappear.  That’s why Xi met with Biden.  They all know it’s over.  National capitalism will have to make a massive comeback, which will impact all the global markets attached to communism, which will be allowed to die on the vine to separate itself from the market flow of America.  That is where America is heading; for a while, we will close our borders and let the rest of the world rot on the last vestiges of globalism as envisioned by Tragedy and Hope (the book).  And if the world wants to survive, it will have to start thinking like Norberg and, fundamentally, getting to know Adam Smith better.  The Karl Marx experiment driven by all the Masonic lodges was a massive failure, and now people like Johan Norberg must fess up to it, which makes his book, The Capitalist Manifesto, the most important book of our time.  I can’t recommend it enough because it is the roadmap for the rest of this century.  And it all starts with what Trump will do in America once he’s reelected.  And the world struggles to catch up, which will be very hard for them.  But do, they must, if they want to survive the world that is coming. 

Rich Hoffman

‘The Capitalist Manifesto’ by Johan Norberg: Admitting to the only economic system that helps people the most

The change of view of economic fundamentals from the political left

After reading Johan Norberg’s book The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World, I’ll admit to a substantial flood of satisfaction. I mean this wasn’t Ayn Rand, it was a kind of Ikea view of capitalism, but the message was quite clear. I’ve read other books by Johan Norberg and he’s pretty good for what I’d consider a lefty. He’s conservative by European standards, but in America, we have very different ideas of what a liberal is. But to Johan, a liberal means less restriction in market economies in a region that has always been about tyranny, the tyranny of the church, the tyranny of some maniacal king, or secret societies trying to undo everything in the background. The lunatic Karl Marx conceived in Europe the birthplace of socialism and communism. I would never have read the book if I hadn’t seen Elon Musk recommend it. I’m not a fan of Elon Musk. I want him to do well with SpaceX. He makes a good car, but he’s not my idea of a good leader. But he is the richest person in the world, and I have thought it interesting to watch him grow his political perspective to accommodate his needs to move humanity into space and set up a colony on Mars. He has learned quite ostentatiously that a socialist Biden government with Barack Obama still whispering in his ear is never going to get Musk where he wants SpaceX to go. It takes too long to obtain permits, and the Department of Labor constantly harasses him because Musk doesn’t allow unionized labor to manage his manufacturing facilities. So Musk has evolved over time and seems to have fully embraced capitalism now in ways that are pace setting. There are a lot of very interesting observations in The Capitalist Manifesto that are quite delicious and well worth talking about. I think it may be one of the most important books of 2023, and it is undoubtedly impactful to the world’s current circumstances.

A very important book

I’ve been talking about this kind of stuff for many years so the change in tone is not lost on me.  What The Capitalist Manifesto is by Norberg is a confession intended for liberals to read that undoes over a century of lunacy in following Karl Marx.  This is not a book intended for the MAGA crowd in America but the many socialists and communists around the world who still are trying to work The Communist Manifesto into political sustainability.  I remember how vicious that media, in general, was when I worked with the producers of the movie Atlas Shrugged to get the message out about their film version of the Ayn Rand books that were famous around the world but were labeled conspiracy theories of the radical right.  So this Johan Norberg confession is no small matter.  It wasn’t written for me or the fans of Ayn Rand, it was written to the college liberal, the Keynesian economist and the diabolical politician getting rich off the Swamp and all its globalist mechanisms.  Norberg has figured out something that the political left has been very slow to admit to: socialism of any kind doesn’t work.  And it was never going to work, and that capitalism, by free people, the freer, the better, is the key to unlocking the powers of any economy.  This is a CATO Institute view of the world that offers a flood of statistics to show just how much better the world is because of capitalism than it is under any other kind of authoritarian approach.  Norberg presents a dizzying display of real-world examples that everyone needs to come to grips with because we now have enough data to make some sobering judgments.

The Capitalist Manifesto was Norberg trying to explain to global liberals that if they want globalism and if they’re going to fight populism, they had better embrace capitalism and do it quickly.  He’s certainly no fan of President Trump, who he sees as a threat to the global order because he’s a nationalist who wants to close the borders of America to outside influence, to turn in instead of migrating out.  But the impact of financial systems driven by political sentiments couldn’t be more obvious.  This book was a white flag from the radical leftist points of view that capitalism was the only solution to global problems such as poverty.  There is no other economic approach that has improved the lives of so many, and as if to solidify critical opinion about capitalism, Johan Norberg cites many instances where Bernie Sanders and Karl Marx himself admitted that capitalism is the best and only way to approach economic theory.  And to argue against any notion that centralized planning does anything but harm people economically and is a background contributor to many of life’s many miseries.  This was a book attempting to capture the MAGA message of free markets in America and stamp liberalism to it as if it was their idea all along.  Again, Norberg has kind of an Ikea view of the world; I wouldn’t call Sweden a bastion of capitalism.  They only look that way because the rest of Europe has the heavy fog of communism and socialism hanging over it in such a devastating way.  America has an expectation of freedom that Europe does not have.  But to even say the word “capitalism” in Europe is taboo, similar to saying that your father has a mistress or that mom is wearing red panties under her white dress to church.  Nobody has been willing to admit these secrets in public until now. 

As I closed the book, I realized I had just read something that would set the tone for the next several decades.  It was a victory in many ways that the enemies of the world understood that they would never win against capitalism.  And that even liberal-minded people like Musk and Norberg, who are poster children for the World Economic Forum, or at least had been until the realities of populism rising around the world forced them to look in the mirror and give up on Marxism wholesale.  The Capitalist Manifesto is not an American book.  I tried to buy a copy at my local Barnes and Noble, but they didn’t have it.  The book ships out of the United Kingdom, so we’re not discussing an American product trying to explain capitalism’s values to the world.  This is coming from a European perspective, where socialism was born and raised to the detriment of most of the world.  Johan Norberg understands that only capitalism has worked to solve many of the problems that Democrats and their many versions regionally are concerned with.  The only way to help people is to find a way to put more money in their pockets that doesn’t involve the government stealing it from people who have made money and giving it to people who were too lazy to work for it.  I can’t recommend this book enough; it’s an avalanche of admissions that culture must embrace.  And within its pages, we can see the future, where liberals are finally going to get on the side of conservatives because they must.  They may even try to steal capitalism as their own, which would be expected of them.  But whatever the case, the world will change for the better as a result, and things will look a whole lot different economically, in a good way, in the decades to come because of the admissions in this book. 

Rich Hoffman