Why capitalism?

• Author: Montz, Rob
• Position: Soundbite - Interview with Jason Brennan - Interview

Jason Brennan, a professor of philosophy at Georgetown, is the author of the new book Why Not Capitalism?, which argues that capitalism works because of humanity's inherent lack of kindness and generosity. Reason TV's Rob Montz spoke with Brennan in June about human goodness, the flaws in socialism, and more. To see video of the interview, go to reason.com.

Q: Every college freshman in this country within one week of taking their first political theory class has said--as if they're the first person to ever think it--of course socialism is the best in theory. If we were able to scrub out some of the bugs of humans' programming that's precisely the kind of society that we'd want to set up for each other. Your book is a direct attack upon that idea.

A: What socialists are often missing is that we're not the Borg from Star Trek. We have private lives. We want to engage in private pursuits, projects of our own undertaking that we do by ourselves, not with others.

I like to say to my socialist colleagues: If you can understand why you wouldn't want to, say, write a philosophy paper with the collective or if you can understand why you'd like to paint a painting by yourself rather than having it done as a group project, you can understand why someone might find a kind of meaning in running a business by himself, or having a factory, or having a farm that's his rather than a collective farm.

Q: Can you explain socialism's "information problem"?

A: In order for us to have cooperation on a massive scale--cooperation on a scale of millions or tens of millions--we need some sort of signal that tells us what's going on in the economy. It turns out we get that signal in market societies and it's in the form of prices. We're all making all these private decisions and it modifies prices a little bit and then we respond appropriately. We don't know what's causing scarcity. We don't know what other peoples' desires are or demands are, we can just see that the price of strawberries is cheap over here and it's...