Why Capitalism?

Newspaper headlines during the peak of the housing-credit crisis called it “the end of capitalism” or the end of American capitalism. As often, they greatly over stated and misstated by projecting a serious, temporary decline as a permanent loss of wealth. Capitalist systems have weathered many more serious problems.

Capitalism as a guiding system for economic activity has spread over the centuries to now encompass most of the world’s economies. This spread occurred despite almost continuous hostility from many intellectuals and, in recent decades, military threat from avowedly Communist countries.