Ben travels to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he explains the difference between free markets and socialism — in the country leading the way toward a new dawn of capitalism. - - - Today’s Sponsor: Helix Sleep - Get an exclusive discount at https://helixsleep.com/Ben Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Alrighty folks, I wanted to give you the opportunity to hear a speech that I made down in Buenos Aires, Argentina at CPAC. It's a speech all about free markets and socialism and why free markets matter. Here's what it sounded like. Well, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. First off, I want to thank everybody who organized CPAC, put this amazing event together.
And I also want to say thank you to the unbelievable people of Argentina who are currently engaging in the single most important economic revitalization effort of the 21st century. What we are watching here is revolutionary. It's a restoration of freedom after generations of socialism.
What's happening right now, President Millet and the people of Argentina are waking up the world to the fundamental reality that liberty means morality, decency, and truth. You, here in this country, are all teaching the world right now. So today, I want to talk about liberty, and I want to talk about socialism.
There's a big story that's been told throughout the West by the left in the aftermath of the demise of the Soviet Union, and it goes something like this. Sure, socialism has never really worked all that well in practice, but really, in theory, it's kind and beautiful and wonderful. And if ever it were truly tried, it would result in a more prosperous and just world.
free markets, they say, are rapacious and cruel at their root. In the words of the socialist leech on the ass of civilization Bernie Sanders, quote, the simple truth is that unfettered capitalism is not just creating economic misery for the majority of Americans, it is destroying our health, our well-being, our democracy, and our planet. Well, that story is, in one word, bullshit.
Free markets are moral. Socialism is evil. Free markets create prosperity. Socialism creates absolute misery. So let's begin at the beginning. For those who missed it, what exactly are free markets? Let's begin with the definition. So free markets are economic systems by which individuals can freely exchange the products and services of their labor. Individual liberty is the locus of free markets.
As the economist and wisest living human being Thomas Sowell says, the market is nothing more than an option for each individual to choose among numerous existing institutions or to fashion new arrangements suited to his own situation and taste. Free markets require two elements, private property and rule of law. Private property, of course, is the private ownership of property.
It's the free ability to dispense with your labor as you wish, to exchange the fruits of your labor with others without intervention by some sort of tyrannical third party. That freedom of exchange leads to a robust system of supply and demand in which sellers and buyers agree on prices.
Free markets require a consistent rule of law, precisely so tyrants can't intervene and skew that market on behalf of a protected class or person. No dictator should be able to elevate his own priorities over that of any other individual in the market. Free markets guarantee what the Nobel Prize-winning economists Darren Asimoglu and James Robinson call inclusive economic institutions.
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