Katherine Mangu-Ward: What capitalism gets right -- and governments get wrong

What capitalism gets right -- and governments get wrong

Is capitalism a good thing? Journalist Katherine Mangu-Ward makes the case that "weirdos" left alone to innovate and explore far-out ideas in a free market system are our best hope for the future. She asks us to reconsider our qualms about capitalism, failure and corporate death, analyzing the recent history of General Motors and Facebook to illustrate why we're better off with a lot less government intervention.

Modern capitalism has sparked a dramatic rise in living standards, cutting global absolute poverty from 84 percent to 9 percent since 1820. Many innovations, from electric light to personal mobile phones, owe their existence to free markets and the freedom to fail. Government intervention too often protects entrenched interests and stifles both the birth of new ideas and the necessary death of outdated ones. Allowing creative risk-takers to experiment, and sometimes fail, fuels progress and prosperity for all.