Michelle LaBrosse Blogs

by Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

“Take away my people, but leave my factories, and soon grass will grow on the factory floors. Take away my factories, but leave my people, and soon we will have a new and better factory.”

Andrew Carnegie

I found this interesting article at www.cato.org on why intellectuals hate capitalism. Basically it is the “wordsmith” intellectuals as opposed to the “numbersmith” intellectuals who dislike capitalism. The basic theory – wordsmith intellectuals disdain capitalism because while they do well in school, their skills are not as valued in a capitalistic society as they are in school.

But lets look at how much capitalists have helped the very folks who disdain them. One of my favorite capitalists – Andrew Carnegie. His major philanthropic activities were building massive libraries around the United States, and funding schools and universities. The bastions of the wordsmith’s domain. Without this incredibly successful capitalist, the wordsmiths would have less access to one of the most important tools of their trade – the library.

Just how does one become a very generous philanthropist? It does take time and intentions, but it also takes MONEY. And money is what capitalists obtain by creating value in society. So it seems extremely counter intuitive that wordsmith intellectuals would disdain the system that enabled them to become wordsmith intellectuals in the first place. This defies logic to me – but then I would be more on the side of the numbersmith intellectuals anyhow.

You don’t see people who run non-profits soliciting money for their efforts from folks who don’t make much money. You see them catering to the capitalists – the folks who have figured out how to create money. As Andrew Carnegie noted in the quote above, capitalists are going to capitalize on any situation. You can’t take away the spirit of a true capitalist no matter how hard you try. This is why I created a course to teach others how to capitalize on the recession. Just because the government and large companies (relatively socialistic organizations) want to put a sour face on changing economic conditions, doesn’t mean that needs to be the response of the capitalist.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 8:36 am and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.