Sometimes the struggle between capitalism and socialism seems like a struggle whether to crown greed or envy in the human heart, all perfidy.

Between greed and covetousness, I'll take greed. The late Sir Roger Scruton explained that "there is a settled tendency on the left to confuse rational self-interest, which powers the market, with greed, which is a form of irrational excess."

The miracle of the market system is that it turns behaviours which could be sins into benefits for all. A man who is truly greedy may sacrifice everything else in his life to acquiring wealth, but what does that do for everyone else? There are only four things a man can do with his riches; spend, save, invest, or donate them. So long as he doesn't save by hiding cash under his mattress, he is benefiting everyone else in the market by increasing the amount of genuine demand or the amount of capital that can be put to use to create even more supply, jobs, and additional wealth.

The market system constantly and spontaneously utilises an infinite amount of information about costs and consumer choices and puts the majority of the scarce resources, capital and labor to its most productive and demanded uses―all without the need for a government mastermind who can never accumulate enough knowledge to direct these resources more effectively than is done spontaneously through the free exchange of producers and consumers in the market.

But let's take a step back and question the charge that both socialism and capitalism are perfidious. What is perfidious about a man wanting to improve the lives of his family by wealth? What is wrong with wanting to provide a better house over their head, better food in their bellies, a greater security from unforeseen future problems, better opportunities, more time for leisure so that one can feast upon the best of what man has written, said, done, and built? That is hardly greed, and it is hardly a vice. It is an unquestionable virtue. It's also quite free from deceit and treachery. It's open, earnest, and even exemplary.

In a socialist system, this laudable motivation to benefit one's family is repressed and replaced by covetousness. The inherent flaw in socialism is that it expects people to work just as hard for strangers and even enemies as they would naturally work for the people whom they love. Nobody works harder so that their neighbour can have a better car. Socialism perverts human nature by removing natural incentives and replacing them with veritable sins. It incentivizes laziness, covetousness, jealousy, envy, and tyranny.

Human wants are infinite, but scarcity is always a factor. Yet the socialist system suppresses the impulse to be productive while it simultaneously flatters people with a fallacious sense of entitlement that encourages them to demand even more than they've already received and to monger grievances against those who deny them their every wish. As Theodore Dalrymple perceived, “When every benefit received is a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone for gratitude.” Socialism has proven itself to be incapable of providing its people with adequate foodstuffs, but it has stuffed people with the fatal conceit that there is nothing a top-down, command-and-control economy cannot provide.

William F. Buckley regularly made the remark that “the problem with socialism is socialism, but the problem with capitalism is capitalists.” History teaches us that there are always going to be capitalists who will step on their mother's neck to make a buck. The problem with greed in the marketplace is when it drives crony capitalism or corporatism which benefits itself at the expense of its competition. But that is something we can prevent with prudent legislation. The other problem with capitalism is that it supplies so many things which are not virtuous or even evil. But the problem there, is not so much capitalism, it's man's fallen and sinful nature. We can ban much that is evil, but we cannot ban everything and expect man to stop being evil.

Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilisation have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionise the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system. --Milton Friedman

What is needed is a system that neither suppresses man's great and virtuous motivation to provide for his family by being productive and contributing something of value to the market but which discourages man's evil incentives to irrational excess, treachery, oppression, and theft on one hand, and on the other his tendency to sloth, covetousness, envy, irresponsibleness, and ungratefulness. -In other words, a humane economy which protects social capital, encourages competition and the distribution of power, and prevents the unholy alliance of big business and big government which aggrandise themselves at the expense of their competition.

It's a very simple solution, but it is not easy. It is possible, but it is terribly difficult. It is not going to become possible, however, until people genuinely understand the strengths and weaknesses of capitalism and the destructiveness and the deceitful lure of socialism.