Of course not. And it's clearly deceptive to accuse Mr. Sanders of saying so. And this even though we have ample evidence that many capitalists (including our current president) are indeed wildly greedy and deeply unethical.
The truth is that many more of them are no more acquisitive and dishonest than the rest of us.
However, the capitalist system itself is indeed corrupt. That's because it rewards immorality in the form of underpaying workers, environmental destruction, and acceptance of huge income inequalities in the face of widespread hunger and poverty.
For starters, consider how the dynamics of an unregulated wage market forces workers to accept the lowest remuneration possible. This is especially true in job categories deemed "unskilled." Because of such classification, and absent minimum wage guarantees, capitalist theory rewards such occupations (belonging to waitpersons, cleaners, grocery clerks, vegetable pickers, etc.) with wages as close as possible to what's absolutely necessary to keep body and soul together. (It's why, for instance, Wal-Mart workers often end up qualifying for food stamps -- a form of socialism relieving their employer from the burden of paying adequate wages, as Mr. Sanders rightly observes.)
Generous employers who decide to exceed the market-determined minimum will typically find themselves undersold by competitors who more obediently follow the dictates of unfettered markets. Because of wage differentials with their rivals, the generous ones will soon find themselves shuttering their enterprises and witnessing from afar the success of their more tight-fisted counterparts.
It's similar with the environment. Competitive market forces reward producers who choose to externalize their costs. Meanwhile, market forces penalize conscientious manufacturers who for example, put scrubbers on their smokestacks or filters on corrosive effluents otherwise polluting nearby bodies of water.
This is because the use of environmentally friendly technologies cost money. They necessarily raise costs of production. They disadvantage those who implement them as they compete with their marketplace opponents who lack environmental conscience. Such destructive outcomes result not from personal greed and corruption, but from systemic failure.
And finally, in an unregulated market, the underpayment of workers along with the externalization of environmental costs (as well as colonial theft of resources) inevitably and historically results in wide income gaps that can only be described as unconscionable.
To illustrate this point, it suffices to cite a single now-familiar statistic that Mr. Sanders often does call out: three American entrepreneurs own as much wealth at the bottom half of U.S. wage earners. And this in a context where an estimated 48.8 million Americans, including 16.2 million children, live in households that lack the means to feed themselves on a regular basis.
Almost anyone with a conscience would be justified in calling such a system "greedy and corrupt." However, the application of those epithets is justified not principally by the shortcomings of entrepreneurs, but by the capitalist system itself.
Capitalism vs. Socialism
And that brings us to Thomas Friedman's final question to Bernie Sanders. Despite its acknowledged shortcomings, isn't capitalism the best we can do? Is Sanders really claiming that planned economies are more productive than their free market alternatives?
Of course, Mr. Sanders says no such thing. This is because despite their rhetoric of "democratic socialism" and "free market economy," the senator from Vermont no more champions an entirely planned economy than Friedman does an economy without any regulation at all.
In reality, both have no alternative but to advocate some form of mixed economy. That's because mixed economies are the only game in town. Except for black markets (which almost everyone recognizes as criminal), no economy in the world can function without heavy regulation. And Mr. Sanders' version of "democratic socialism" is nothing more than Rooseveltian New Dealism, which ironically was required during the 1930s to save capitalism itself.
More specifically, the New York Times columnist praises Denmark's "broad social safety net," its "expanded welfare state," high level of taxation, as well as its spirit of cooperation between all stakeholders. All these taken together with free markets explain for him the country's enviable living standards.
For his part, what Sanders demands repeatedly is not the dissolution of corporations, but that they play by the rules and pay their fair share of taxes.
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