Good Cap, Bad Cap

Yeah, it's a trick headline. You probably misread it to be "good cop, bad cop." But no, it's about something else: capitalism. And just like there are good cops and bad cops, there is good capitalism and bad capitalism.

No less a person than Rick Perry has figured this out:

"They’re vultures sitting out there on the tree limb waiting for the company to get sick," Perry said of private equity firms during remarks to an assisted living community in northeastern South Carolina. "And then they swoop in, they eat the carcass, they leave with that and they leave the skeleton.”

As E.J. Dionne notes, when Rick Perry starts to sound like Molly Ivins, you know we're about to have some interesting discussions about capitalism.

So here's the question: Is there such a thing as bad capitalism? And if so, what does it look like?

If you, the reader, answer the first question with "No, all capitalism is good," then you and I have nothing to discuss in this space. You are a True Believer in the infallible correctness of the Invisible Hand. In other words, you worship man-made markets like you would God, and believe the same things about them.

If, on the other hand, you are willing to concede that some capitalism can be bad, then we can move on to the second question, the real meat of the question: What is Bad Capitalism? What does it look like?

It's too simple to just say "look at the jobs" -- but that's certainly a good place to start. If a company is profitable while employing 1,000 people, is it good capitalism to make it more profitable by firing 500 of those people? Who reaps the profits, and who reaps the pain?

It's a good question, and not an easy one to work through. Most free-market fetishists would just say "price of progress" when asked about the loss of jobs, and most progressives would just say "damn 1%" when told about it.

I want to explore this more in coming posts. For now though, let's just put this out there:

There is such a thing as bad capitalism, and we need to discuss it further.