<Once more - "Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all." -- Economist John Maynard Keynes

Laying aside the fact that I can find no source that confirms that Keynes ever actually said this (aside from endless repeats by enthusiastic leftists on the Web), if he had, he would have been, and not for the first time, absolutely wrong in almost every aspect of this statement.

Capitalists are not necessarily "nasty," any more than any other people. It comforts socialists, especially those whose lives have been abject failures in any productive activity, to believe that no one could possibly become wealthy without being corrupt, or exploiting others. Hence the view that business is, almost by definition, "evil."
They cling to their moral superiority as the main reason for their poverty and failure. Whatever floats their boat, I guess. That doesn't make them right.

And the profit motive is not "nasty" either. It is the desire to use one's efforts and skills to create more wealth and/or value than was there before, and is the main engine of almost every bit of progress that has ever happened on Earth.

And as far as "benefits" go, capitalism has created societies that have endowed even its poorest citizens with wealth that would have been the envy of most people throughout history. Capitalist nations offer their citizens freedom and choices that no other system has generated. The citizens of capitalist nations, despite the lies of the Left, are among the most benevolent on the planet. America's donations to the poor and hungry of the planet dwarf those of most "enlightened" socialist nations. And don't forget the tremendous benefits brought into the world by American technology and knowhow.

Most anti-Americans and anti-capitalists I have met are driven mostly by bitterness and a huge portion of envy. No objective observer could fail to see that a "free market/free minds" system is better for the citizens living under it than any alternative that has been tried. Certainly light-years better than socialism.

"For me, brought up in a free air undarkened by the horrors of religion, and with nothing to be afraid of, Red Russia holds too much which is detestable. Comfort and habits let us be ready to forgo, but I am not ready for a creed which does not care how much it destroys the liberty and security of daily life, which uses deliberately the weapons of persecution, destruction, and individual life. How can I admire a policy which finds a characteristic expression in spending millions to suborn spies in every family and group at home, and to stir up trouble abroad?… How can I accept a doctrine which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete economic textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of human advancement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of Red bookshops? It is hard for an intelligent, decent, educated son of western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first undergone some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values…"



--A view of Soviet Russia by John Maynard Keynes



As for Enron and the rest, the fact that these behaviors are being treated as aberrations and crimes, rather than ignored as the norm, show that the system is working. The attempts to paint capitalism as evil based on this stuff is as transparent and phoney as similar attempts by the Left to taint the entire Catholic church with the crimes of a few. The Left's objective is not justice, but the destruction of systems and beliefs that they hate.