Source: Shutterstock

A fundamental error of leftist economic thinking is the idea that wealth is created solely by labor. Sure, laborers are required to produce an iPhone”€”at least until robotics make that unnecessary”€”but it takes a genius to design one. When it comes to economics, brains generate far more literal wealth than brawn.

For me, a good measure of any given society’s value is how many inventions it churns out. If it takes a whole village to raise a child but that same village would be clueless about how to even make a chair, I don”€™t think that’s a very valuable village. A brief glimpse of the historical record shows that communist societies were long on rhetoric and short on innovation. The world’s communist experiments have yielded massive misery and oppression and soul-obliterating conformity, but I can”€™t imagine any of them ever creating an iPhone”€”or even a Pop Tart, for that matter.

You know who else didn”€™t like capitalism? Joseph Goebbels. He saw it as a Jewish thing. It’s fun to point out this niggling factoid to those who are simultaneously horrified by both capitalism and white supremacy. If these people had brains and thus the capability to apprehend the fact that nothing they believe is reconcilable with reality, those brains would be exploding all over the dashboards of their Priuses.

Sure, it may seem mean, cruel, or even counterproductive for me to mock their fatal naiveté. The truth is that I couldn”€™t resist.