As someone who likes the ideas of voluntarism I tend to criticise our government sometimes. But since The Netherlands is very socialistic (the state costs 48% of our GDP) my critique occasionally stirs up confusion and sometimes even discomfort. On more than one occasion people suggested that my critique signifies a blind trust in capitalism as if it could not be immoral. I am writing to clear things up.

I hope we all aspire to create a system that maximises moral actors and responsibility. I believe capitalism creates far better control over immoral behaviour than government. That is because:

Power in a free market is mostly the result of voluntary interactions Power in government is mostly the result of involuntary interactions

Let me explain by comparing highly immoral things each system created and the effects it had on those responsible.

Free market immorality

Once upon a time there were German car manufacturers that became very lazy. In secret meetings they came together to collectively pledge not to work so hard on R&D anymore. Instead they would focus on a far more lucrative business; misleading consumers. They invented special software so their cars could detect and cheat emission tests to appear up to 40 times cleaner than they were in reality. It went well until it didn't. They got caught and as a result they were now global news.

( )

The world over people were outraged, they appeared on the front page on the biggest media outlets and the Volkwagen stock plummeted 30% overnight, shaving 20 billion USD off its market cap. The CEO stepped down and publicly admitted wrongdoings. In a clash action lawsuit initiated by duped customers VW settled to pay back 14.7 billion USD.

The reaction of VW was a result of their position of power being subjected to the voluntary interactions of everyone involved. Shareholders sold the company voluntarily because the public chooses which car they buy voluntarily. And they might never wanted to buy cars from them anymore.

Government immorality

Oke let's talk war. Governments seem to just can't help themselves when it comes to getting involved in wars. Take the Dutch government for example. They told the Dutch media that Saddam Hoessein had weapons of mass destruction and that he wasn't afraid to use them. And while the Dutch media could not resist to feed such a juicy story to the public, the government mobilised troops that would make up 1% of the entire force in Iraq.

As everyone knows, the WMD claims were false but is did not stop 667.800 people from being killed as a result of the war. If the Dutch contributed 1% to the war, we killed 6.600 people, that is as if we all gathered in groups of 2500 people to kill someone.

Unlike with Volkwagen however the result was not a drop in government revenue, the politicians responsible did not step down, they did not even apologize, there was no court case to settle and no survivors were paid compensation. The power of government is not dependent on their performance.

Now imagine what would happen if Volkswagen was the one responsible for this war. If they would say they were going to safe us from Saddam, since support for a war carried out "unilaterally by America and its allies" did not rise above 11 percent in any country, it is likely that 89% of the stocks would be sold within just a couple of hours, resulting in the immediate resignation of the directors and a different course for the company even before one plane would have taken off.

We need control over power and the voluntary interaction of free markets provides just that.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casualties

The Lancet, one of the oldest scientific medical journals in the world, published two peer-reviewed studies on the effect of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation on the Iraqi mortality rate.

Total deaths

( 392,979 + 942,636) / 2 = 667,807.5 is the Lancet average

667,807.50.01 = 6,678.075 is per 1% involvement. *

http://www.investopedia.com/news/vw-scandal-how-has-it-impacted-volkswagens-stock-vlkay/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/07/24/german-car-makers-shares-crash-allegations-collusion/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_Iraq_War#cite_note-2