A great example of capitalism with a human face with a beard even! is Garry Kvistad founder and proprietor of Woodstock Chimes®.
Theres an urban legend besetting the urbane that capitalism is a system of privilege designed for the Ebenezer Scrooges of the world. Not so. Capitalism works at least as well for us Bob Cratchits as it does for misers probably better. Capitalism is the only proven mechanism by which the workers of the world may unite to lose their chains.
The big picture is set out in a recent article in the UKs The Spectator a magazine that bills itself modestly yet with a sterling claim as the best-written and most entertaining magazine in the English language." (Exception: apparently these blokes havent been reading Forbes but let us not quibble.) Its Why 2012 was the best year ever observes:
It may not feel like it but 2012 has been the greatest year in the history of the world. That sounds like an extravagant claim but it is borne out by evidence. Never has there been less hunger less disease or more prosperity. The West remains in the economic doldrums but most developing countries are charging ahead and people are being lifted out of poverty at the fastest rate ever recorded. The death toll inflicted by war and natural disasters is also mercifully low. We are living in a golden age."
This world scoop lays out paragraph after paragraph of impressive evidence for its thesis. One of the most compelling points:
In 1990 the UN announced Millennium Development Goals the first of which was to halve the number of people in extreme poverty by 2015. It emerged this year that the target was met in 2008. Yet the achievement did not merit an official announcement presumably because it was not achieved by any government scheme but by the pace of global capitalism. Buying cheap plastic toys made in China really is helping to make poverty history. And global inequality? This too is lower now than any point in modern times. Globalisation means the worlds not just getting richer but fairer too.
As this columnist has pointed out here before in The End of Politics World Peace is breaking out. This is obscured by media reportage focusing on carnage. And yet the peace which is real represents a brisk tailwind for the forces of small l" liberal small r" republican governance and a headwind for the Big Government/Dark Side of the Force crowd. As The Spectator puts it bringing billions of souls out of extreme poverty did not merit an official announcement presumably because it was not achieved by any government scheme but by the pace of global capitalism." World Prosperity as well as Peace is emerging: a golden age."
Real capitalism is a humanitarian force. Making capitalism synonymous with miserliness is what Marxists call false consciousness. A great example of capitalism with a human face with a beard even! is Garry Kvistad founder and proprietor of Woodstock Chimes®.
Whenever you hear a wind chime or see one in a gift shop chances are that its a Woodstock Chime. Woodstock is by far the market leader. It earned its market leadership by providing a superb quality product at a competitive price reliable service and good management. It began as so many companies do with its founders passion. From Chimes.com:
Being a recent college graduate Garry found the materials for his metallophone at the local landfill it was made from the aluminum tubes of discarded lawn chairs! Garry was fascinated by the Scales of Olympos a 7th century Greek pentatonic scale that cant be played on a modern piano. His metallophone experiment was so successful that he had the idea to cut and tune lawn chair tubes to the exact frequency of the scale and create a windchime from the tubes. … The Chime of Olympos® was the first Woodstock Chime…."
Kvistad a Grammy® Award winning musician also is a founder and participant of the most highly regarded percussion ensemble working today NEXUS. And as he said over craft beer to this columnist Its clear that if you wish to pursue a career in New Music performing works by extraordinary composers such as Steve Reich and John Cage youd better have a supplementary source of income."
In addition to freeing Garry to play the music that delights him (and audiences worldwide) the Kvistads have distributed millions of dollars of profits philanthropically. Many who have earned wealth are generous givers. (Actually… Republicans very well advertised as to a man rich mean and miserly have a well-documented track record as noted by George Will of charitableness consistently far in excess of that of the equally well advertised sweet generous wealthy Democrats. Go figure. No implication intended that the Kvistads might be sinister Republicans. Perish the thought.)
Let it not be thought however that the laws governing Hippie Capitalism are somehow kinder gentler or more renewable than that of Republican Square Capitalism. To most everyones surprise it turns out that the laws of economics being laws of nature apply to all equally. The law of supply and demand like the law of gravity applies to Progressives as well as conservatives. (This is a fact mostly unnoticed or at least unforgiven by Progressive policy makers.)
Some years ago Kvistad noticed that international suppliers were beginning to sell chimes almost as good as Woodstocks and more cheaply. The necessary response as it turned out did not involve redeploying to the city dump in search of more discarded lawn chairs. We had always manufactured our chimes right here near Woodstock" Kvistad told me. It was very gratifying to be able to provide work to skilled artisans here in my home town. Yet it was clear to me that if we continued to make them here we soon would be out of business and providing no jobs at all. So I sought out and found reliable high quality ethical suppliers in China and Indonesia and… between natural workforce attrition people moving on or moving away and retraining my team to handle the complexities of managing an inventory built abroad I was able not only to keep jobs here in America but to generate more highly skilled better paying jobs right here. It was a positive not a negative sum game. (Emphasis added.) We also sell in Europe Canada and are opening up a distribution center in the UK. All of that goes to create more American jobs."
Kvistads action provides empirical proof as if more were needed of Tamnys Law (named for the editor of Forbes.com Opinion who has reiterated this observation ad infinitum and one hopes will continue to do so until the policy elites come to grips with reality): Technology erases unnecessary work so that we can constantly migrate toward more productive pursuits. We destroy jobs to create better ones."
It begins to appear that the world is entering as The Spectator noted in emulation of this columnist a golden age." (A Golden Age" has been this columns categorical title for over two years. Memo to The Spectator: Forbes scooped you.) A golden age may prove precursor rather than the predicate of a return to the classical gold standard. As the rest of the world honors rather than attempts to override the natural laws governing the production of goods and services the rest of the world becomes more prosperous … and fair. Will the political elites of the developed world continue to adopt policies calculated to induce economic doldrums"? Perhaps the sight of equitable prosperity blossoming all around us will inspire our own policy makers toward capitalism.
To rephrase Keynes: no subtler no surer means of restoring an equitable prosperity to society has been found than the classical gold standard. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of human flourishing and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose. Perhaps we will not have to wait the generation or two until Bangladesh as observed by The Spectator becomes as rich as England for America and the West to decide that a solid dose of small l" liberal capitalism as exemplified by the gold standard is just what America and the West needs to thrive. If our own policy elites do not soon grasp this simple fact then it is high time to start a national conversation about offshoring our economic policy making perhaps to the editorial board of the The Spectator.