Fighting the Last War

All this anti-capitalism stuff reminds me of a post I think I've linked to before, in which Matthew Yglesias considers the merits of Hayek et al. This passage stands out:

The thing about Hayek that's always worth keeping in mind was that things were quite different in his day. In particular, lots and lots of people thought that the Great Depression had totally discredited capitalism...

This war is over, though, which is also why I think the economic calculation problem is overblown. It's a good way to understand why prices are almost certainly necessary, but it tells us little about particular markets. In other words, like the term "anti-capitalist," it's really a relic of the last war. Socialism will never really go the way of "crossing the T," but it's not on the agenda in the US. The crucial thing today is to deepen our understanding of particular markets, such as healthcare, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals. These are markets in which laissez faire does not work, but statism probably doesn't work either. It's a new war, and it's time to let the old battles sink into history.