Capitalism: Is there anything it can’t do?
As President Trump starts to turn his focus to restarting the economy, some states are starting to look at strategies to reopen.
This is exactly what should have happened from the beginning.
If you look at how Sweden’s been dealing with this from the outset, they decided to keep everything open and trust people to do what’s best for them. And so far, the results have been encouraging.
People know what’s best for them, and we should trust them to make their own decisions. If Vice President Pence’s task force had taken a minute to gather information, they should have seen their main responsibility would have been to keep people informed, not locked up in their homes.
By leaving this up to the free market, we would leave it up to every individual who runs a business to determine whether or not they want to stay open. And we would have left it up to each citizen to determine whether or not they want to patronize those businesses.
There wouldn’t be any rules that say people can’t open their business, and there wouldn’t be any rules that say people can’t patronize whatever business they want. Kinda like we always do it.
If we left it up to people to do what they think best for them, then the only decisions Congress would be making would be more along the lines of giving some protections or showing some grace for those who a) are at risk, and b) are concerned about going to work in a highly contagious environment.
For the states that do start loosening restrictions and letting people do what they think best, I’m confident businesses that open are going to find new customers, and I’m sure people who choose to be customers will shift their loyalties toward businesses that choose to stay open.
This is the way capitalism works. And it always works.
Staying indoors is only putting off the inevitability of the virus making its way through society, with considerable cost to millions of people who may never get sick from coronavirus.
It’s time to let the market work for us, and against the virus. Let’s open it up and leave it to people to do what they think is right.
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