Teen Vogue’s Naive Take on Capitalism

Nobody would expect Teen Vogue to offer accurate commentary on economics, but the report on capitalism featured on the fashion-and-entertainment outlet for teens recently sounds a lot like a parody. Interestingly enough, Vogue magazine’s founder, Arthur Baldwin Turnure, was nothing but a product of free enterprise and capitalism himself. In founding the magazine in 1892, Turnure wanted the publication to “celebrate the ceremonial side of life,” not misinform the public on the virtues of living in a free society.

But, linking to the Merriam-Webster’s definition of capitalism, the piece starts by warping the dictionary’s interpretation of the economic system by saying that all trade and private enterprise is controlled by “companies, instead of by the people whose time and labor powers those companies.” However, capitalism is far from the corporate ownership of all enterprise, as the magazine itself was the product of a man’s effort and vision, not a conglomerate’s endeavor.

Capitalism’s Critics Misinform — on Purpose

Ludwig von Mises alerted his readers in 1979’s Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow that many people use certain terms to define capitalism that are meant to mislead. Long before the “fake news” era, Mises was reminding economics students that capitalism, or the market economy, seeks to create an environment of cooperation, where private ownership of the means of production empowers the individual to better serve and be served without any strings attached to government officials.

In other words, Mises explained in The Anti-Capitalist Mentality, “capitalism is essentially a system of mass production for the satisfaction of the needs of the masses. It pours a horn of plenty upon the common man. It has raised the average standard of living to a height never dreamed of in earlier ages. It has made accessible to millions of people enjoyments which a few generations ago were only within the reach of a small élite.”

But despite the anti-tyrannical nature of the market economy, and its anti-monopolistic strain, Teen Vogue’s view is that capitalists are “wealthy people who have a large amount of capital (money or other financial assets) invested in business, and who benefit from the system of capitalism by making increased profits and thereby adding to their wealth.”

Apparently, in their view, capitalists are not the immigrants selling water bottles at the traffic light, the Mexican grandmas selling tacos from a makeshift stand by the beach, the Syrian refugee family uniting an entire community through the art of chocolate making, or the Greek man who spends 60 hours a week shining shoes and building pool tables outside of Chicago.

To millennials, Teen Vogue then adds, capitalism is evil and the future belongs to socialism, which the author simply defines as the system “in which the means of production are collectively and equally owned by everyone,” without discussing its many negative and soul-crushing consequences.

What the publication fails to explain is that instead of an economic setting, socialism creates an environment where there are no consumers to help producers gauge demand. In the end, irrationality wins, as all decisions are made from the top down.

Essentially, socialism puts the individual’s very existence in the hands of a handful of organizers, government bureaucrats who do not understand people’s needs. In no time, each and every member of a community goes from being an independent actor, filled with his or her own goals and dreams, to being bound to a higher order. In other words, socialism is tyranny, whether you want to call it democratic socialism or not.

When millennials say they see socialism making a comeback in the near future, they are not looking at the conditions created by the system — they are simply making statements based on what today’s socialists promise. And despite their lack of basic understanding of what socialism entails, in practice young men and women are living the lives of dedicated capitalists and entrepreneurs; yet they take the laws of economics for granted, ignoring the fact that the lives they live would be impossible under a socialist regime.

As pointed out at the Weekly Standard, a recent survey showed that, so far, millennials have shown no real knowledge of what socialism is. When asked if a “government-managed economy” was a good thing, for example, only 32 percent said yes. Yet 58 percent of young respondents in another survey said they approved of socialism, perhaps unaware that the system requires the government to manage the economy.

Perhaps the ignorance displayed by the Teen Vogue piece could give us a clue as to why so many young individuals have a hard time understanding the basic differences between capitalism and socialism. After all, the capitalism “exposé” published by Teen Vogue appears to have been penned by a young writer whose education failed her, much like it did to many others like her — especially when it comes to economics.

Unlearning Capitalism

If you were to take Teen Vogue’s word for it, you would think that capitalism is “exploitative and leads to a brutally divided society that tramples the working classes in favor of fattening the rich’s wallets.”

You would also believe that capitalism kills the environment and that it creates an anti-democratic system.

While the article’s author actually admits that “economic freedom leads to political freedom and having a state-owned means of production can lead to federal overreach and authoritarianism,” she repeatedly decries the capitalist system because of its focus on the individual rather than the collective, apparently oblivious that grouping people like herds makes it easier for them to be ruled by brutal government regimes.

The strength of freedom lies in the great numbers of individuals all working to lift themselves while serving others. As Henry Hazlitt famously explained in Marxism in One Minute, followers of socialism learn to “hate the man who is better off than” they are, and to never “under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community.”

But by attributing personal success to exploitation and even robbery, the socialist erases personal responsibility, giving its followers the illusion that, perhaps, their own failures have nothing to do with their lack of dedication, incompetence, or weakness, but come about because someone cheated them.

Unfortunately, once socialism is finally implemented, those who promised everyone a place in the sun don’t seem as prophetic, as they ignored what economics teaches us: that top-down policies have effects, and that the long-term effect of a government-controlled economy is the lowering of all people’s living standards.

We can hope that the teens and young Americans reading Teen Vogue will eventually understand that. Until then, all we can do is to continue pointing out the inconsistencies and flat-out inaccurate arguments made in the media.

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