How Kids Learn to Love Capitalism

Capitalism, according to the Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, is "An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market."

Isn't that quaint? It sounds penned by the uptight Economics prof Phillip Barbay in Back to School, factually accurate but naively incomplete. To capture the genuine splendor of Capitalism at work, we'd do better to have it defined by Thornton Mellon from the same film, whose estimate for building a factory displays an appreciation for the "realities" of the free market system:

"First of all you're going to have to grease the local politicians for the sudden zoning problems that always come up. Then there's the kickbacks to the carpenters, and if you plan on using any cement in this building I'm sure the teamsters would like to have a little chat with ya, and that'll cost ya."

Capitalism is Darwinian economics, the strong survive and the weak sit out, and it's the strong that define the system: Predatory lenders traded short-term revenue for long-term economic collapse by arranging mortgages for people who couldn't afford to pay for them; Exxon Mobil earned $40.7 billion in profits in 2007 as the U.S. economy began treading the slippery slope of recession; Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O'Neal steered the company into an $8 billion dollar loss and arranged a $161 million severance package for himself before his departure. That sounds more like Thorton Mellon's Capitalism, the ka-ching-like sound of ambition colliding with opportunism. To quote another silver screen Capitalist, Wall Street's Gordon Gekko, "greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works."

Capitalism is synonymous with the United States, closer to a religion than an economic policy, and membership in "the church" is activated when you're issued your social security number. U.S. paper currency is ugly and monochromatic not because green ink is cheaper, but to keep people from being distracted: Money isn't fashion, it's function, and it's meant to be spent. Other nations can make their scrip multi-colored and gorgeous, but in America, it shouldn't be in your wallet long enough that you would take it out and admire it like a photograph.

This contemplation of capitalism began when my daughter became co-proprietor of her first lemonade stand last week. She and her friend began peddling tiny paper cups of instant Country Time lemonade for 25 cents a glass. As I watched them charm 20-odd patrons out of $14.00 ("keep the change" were oft-heard parting words from kind neighbors and passersby), I remarked to my wife that this was our five-year-old's introduction to American capitalism. Forget the lessons of Thornton Mellon and Gordon Gekko, the glow of greed in the eyes of those girls as they counted and recounted the money accumulating in their lunch-box-turned-cash-box indicated that the seeds of capitalism are planted long before movie characters get to define the concept in passionate soliloquies. (Naturally, the girls wanted to repeat the process the next day, and the next, as if, forgive the mixed metaphor, a lemonade stand was a cash cow that could be milked at will.)

I remember my own first lemonade stand decades ago, but it wasn't a primer on Capitalism so much as an introduction to predatory marketing strategies. A friend and I opened shop on the north corner of Pike Avenue simply to spite the boy who had set up his own stand on the south corner of the same intersection. I don't recall the catalyst for this competition (some questionable ruling in a hide-and-seek game perhaps), but our dueling soft-drink ventures taught us nothing about Capitalism because we were preoccupied learning the value of that famous adage about "location, location, location": Traffic on Pike Avenue wasn't sufficient to support one drink merchant, let alone two. I learned about Capitalism at school, with a game called "Kill the One with the Ball".