TMI reviews Confessions of an Economic Hitman

by John Perkins. After summarizing the points of agreement between libertarians and
Perkins, Christopher Westley says:

Confessions [of an Economic Hitman, by]is a problematic book.... While its basic thesis would appeal to libertarians and small-government conservatives troubled by a growing US empire that reduces freedom at home, Perkins's biases are essentially left-liberal. As a result, he often confuses (what he calls) the "corporatocracy" — the teaming of the feds and select private sector firms to advance political hegemony and economic rent — with capitalism itself.

Perkins's primary problem is in assuming that all global capitalism is sinister in the sense described in his book. Any creation of wealth that depends on coercion can hardly be considered market capitalism. It truly is sinister when a US firm, funded indirectly by taxpayer dollars, forces indigenous people offs their land in South America because geological tests suggest that oil deposits there surpass those of the Middle East. It is sinister because it violates the property rights of both the taxpayers who fund the politically well-connected firms and of the displaced peoples and cultures whose property rights are violated when they are removed from their land (often with much suffering).

But Perkins's anticapitalism really shows when he equates such activity with (say) the opening of a Nike plant a third world country. No one dies, and no cultures are killed off, when a factory opens and workers living near it can voluntarily sell their labor for wages that (economic theory tells us) exceed their next-best opportunity for work.

In developing countries, a new Nike plant is a godsend, not only because it increases capital flows to a region, but because it means that families can become autonomous, or that daughters do not have to resort to prostitution to put food on the table.

In this sense, it is perverse to assume that a Wal-Mart in China or a McDonald's in South Korea is analogous to a Bechtel in India or a Halliburton in Iraq.

If libertarians decide to quit doing battle with the rest of the English speakers in the world, maybe we should start modifying our use of the word "capitalism" and call it instead "libertarian capitalism."