Capitalism Creates Happiness as Well as Wealth

Capitalism deserves praise, not just because it builds society's wealth, but also because it builds individual happiness. As British/Australian sociologist Peter Saunders wrote (Why Capitalism Is Good for the Soul):

By perpetually raising productivity, capitalism has not only driven down poverty rates and raised life expectancy, it has also released much of humanity from the crushing burden of physical labour, freeing us to pursue ‘higher’ objectives instead. What Clive Hamilton airily dismisses as a ‘growth fetish’ has resulted in one hour of work today delivering twenty-five times more value than it did in 1850. This has freed huge chunks of our time for leisure, art, sport, learning, and other ‘soul-enriching’ pursuits. Despite all the exaggerated talk of an ‘imbalance’ between work and family life, the average Australian today spends a much greater proportion of his or her lifetime free of work than they would had they belonged to any previous generation in history.

There is another sense, too, in which capitalism has freed individuals so they can pursue worthwhile lives, and that lies in its record of undermining tyrannies and dictatorships. As examples like Pinochet’s Chile and Putin’s Russia vividly demonstrate, a free economy does not guarantee a democratic polity or a society governed by the rule of law. But as Milton Friedman once pointed out, these latter conditions are never found in the absence of a free economy. Historically, it was capitalism that delivered humanity from the ‘soul-destroying’ weight of feudalism. Later, it freed millions from the dead hand of totalitarian socialism. While capitalism may not be a sufficient condition of human freedom, it is almost certainly a necessary one. 

(Hat tip: professorbainbridge.com). Saunders thus echoes a theme of this blog, a point made by political economists over and over (but currently doubted by some): that free markets foster human freedom (and vice versa), that the right to prosperity (the pursuit of happiness) is just as much a God-given right as life and liberty, that liberty and prosperity are intertwined and interdependent. But we don't need to be told this: We know innately that free markets build happiness. No one died trying to cross the Iron Curtain to get into East Germany.  No one sails a bathtub to cross shark-infested waters desperately trying to get from Key West to Cuba.  And South Koreans do not take their lives in their hands to sneak across the DMZ to seek utopia in the north.  Quite the opposite.

If people are willing to risk their lives to escape collectivist countries in order to live in a capitalist one, wouldn't you think those who already live in a capitalist country, and never risked anything to do so, would appreciate what they have been blessed with?