Why am I not worried that some group of people or the entire world are ‘moving towards socialism’?

Because I have eyes.

Everywhere I look – every state, country, city, or region in every culture and tongue – everywhere I have ever been or heard about consists of people who daily reveal their love for markets. People the world over love free trade and the fruits thereof. They seek it. They find it even when governments try to stamp it out. It cannot die.

People love to create, exchange, produce, consume, innovate, improve, and seek material and spiritual progress, happiness, and comfort. The remotest place on earth, if humans live there, will have shops and markets and trading of some kind.

Everywhere capitalism has an ounce of oxygen or an inch of space it explodes with a force untouchable by any do-gooder scheme of violence and control.

Show me a protester and I will show you his closet full of the fruits of capitalism. Show me an advocate of redistributionism and I’ll show you her interest-yielding accounts. Show me an unruly mob and I’ll show you a group of consumers and producers who jump at every chance to engage in peaceful, self-interested trade.

I don’t listen much to what people say. People say they love many things that, when the lights go out, they completely ignore. They say they hate many things that, when behind closed doors they delight in. One of the great lessons of social sciences is that people’s labels and protests and pet causes and speeches and tracts do a piss-poor job of revealing their preferences compared to their actions.

People say a great many things about markets with words. Yet they speak with remarkable simplicity and uniformity with deeds. That voice cries out, the world over, that humans love nothing more than the freedom to peacefully pursue their own self-interest and enjoy the results of that pursuit.

Listen to their actions. Give them more of what they want. The greater the extent of freedom experienced the harder it is to lose that ground later.

Don’t just tell people what markets can do. Show them.

Imagine. Create. Build. And see that you are not alone. All of humanity supports you, though many lack the clarity or sense or humility to admit it in words.