Wall Street Journal (August 7)
“The most striking fact about the recently announced sale of the Boston Globe and Washington Post is their low prices…. The prices reflect the decline of newspapers as a business in the Internet age, which is the kind of creative destruction millions of Americans have experienced. Disruption is the price a capitalist economy pays for innovation, and the news business is merely the latest example.” The new owners should be welcomed as they provide “an opportunity for new ideas and perhaps a turnaround.”
Tags: Boston Globe, Capitalism, Creative destruction, Decline, Disruption, Ideas, Innovation, Internet, Newspapers, Opportunity, Owners, Prices, Turnaround, Washington Post
Washington Post (May 13, 2013)
“It’s been five years since the onset of the financial crisis — the rescue of Bear Stearns in March 2008 — and we still don’t know whether the financial system is safe.” Progress has clearly been made, but whether it’s sufficient or even the right sort remains very much to be seen. “Will Dodd-Frank save capitalism or suffocate it? It may be years before we know.”
Forbes (March 25)
The world’s ranks of billionaires has expanded to 1,426 and as a group they are richer than ever. “The impressive increase in the net worth of the world’s billionaires and the fact that there are 200 more of these folks than there were a year ago will have leftists everywhere decrying the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots…. But don’t blame these rich…. The overwhelming majority of these people have moved ahead through meeting the needs and wants of other people, not through inheritances or crony capitalism. Their successes didn’t come at the expense of everyone else. Free-market capitalism is not a zero-sum system.”
Tags: Billionaires, Capitalism, Free market, Have nots, Haves, Inheritance, Success
The Economist (February 9)
“Even as another nuclear provocation looms, hope glimmers for the world’s most oppressed people…. a revolutionary force is rising from below: a new class of traders and merchants. Capitalism is seeping through the bamboo curtain.” The North Korean state has repeatedly tried and failed to stamp out this developing class. “North Korea’s capitalists are here to stay” and they are creating cracks from within and deserve the world’s support. “Nothing is more potent than exposing people to the prosperity and freedoms of the world around them.”
Tags: Capitalism, Freedom, Merchants, North Korean, Nuclear, Prosperity, Traders
