The creation of wealth and capital in many senses of those words is certainly at its height in a full free market, in which ideas, knowledge, talent, effort, goods, resources, commodities, and currency are all freely traded, and profit in every sense of the word is derived directly and indirectly by each person. This is of great personal advantage to every sort of person. But it is only part of the greatness of free exchange, and it is the maximization of what occurs otherwise, though to a lesser degree, even with limitations on exchange. There is something which is only possible in a fully free market, in Promethean capitalism.

The unique, special nature of a free market of individuals is nature. Individualism is more natural for a species which is made of individual characters and individual minds, which have differences. Promethean capitalism is the only economy which can be said to encourage human nature, especially the individuality of different kinds of personalities, in fully cooperative competition.

Competition

Of course, one most famous characteristic of a market which is free to any degree is competition. This results from the allowances for choice which are present: to work or not to work for one or another employer, to buy or not to buy from one or another store or supplier, to support one sort of enterprise or another. So, an economy in which all choices that can be made are allowed (corresponding to personal consequences of success or failure) will logically have the most competition for purchases, workers, contracts, etc. That competition will generally increase quality and lower prices of goods, raise relative wages and benefits, and indirectly affect other boons to quality of life has been demonstrated by many economists, and by the evidence of practice. There is something more to competition, though, which is desirable in terms of individual human development: competition provokes us to achieve our best, and become our best.

Economic competition is often characterized by its detractors as "dog-eat-dog," merciless, and unforgiving. Government and business leaders alike often endorse industry 'stability' instead of the dynamic fluidity of competition. But the competition of capitalism does not mean antagonistic competition. Competitive spirit does not have to mean combative spirit. Sometimes it does, as in the case of aggressive corporate mergers (though corporations do not exist in Promethean capitalism), but most people find that in practice, the greatest gain comes from working with or alongside others rather than against them. And more people will be more likely to discover this in a Promethean society than are aware of it today.

Promethean capitalism is based on cooperation just as much as it is based on competition. Every exchange requires cooperation. Every project which is larger than one person's abilities, requires cooperation. The same great pinnacle that is possible and appropriate to one, may be completely impossible for another, and only achievable through pretense and distortion. But that other person may be suited to achieve something else entirely, something which the first would find impossible. Because of this diversity, we may count on cooperation.

Promethean capitalism simply means that different people are allowed to pursue their own ideas of profit, and convince others to contribute to it in voluntary exchanges. In a voluntary exchange people will usually ask for something in return to contribute to their own ideas of profit. Therefore, to gain an advantage in dealing with other people, one must contribute to their advantage as well. The competition here is in the attempt to convince those who can help you that you can help them more than others can. This is true of employers who seek better employees by means of higher salaries, more benefits, and better working conditions. This is true of salesmen who must convince customers their goods are better or cheaper than other stores' goods. This is even true of trying to make good friends to associate with in our leisure time. We probably would not think to feel guilty about not giving our time and energy to everyone equally, but with money we are told this competition is unhealthy, or too heated. Competition toward mutual aid — is that ever really a problem? In Promethean capitalism, we all get to seek out the greatest advantage we can for our own investment of time, money, effort, or anything else we have to give.

It is true that this competition involves choices about what is better and more valuable than something else. Is that a problem, or is it the case that making value-judgments is perfectly natural? In a free market, people make decisions about what choice is better. But these are their own decisions, and as long as they are not forced to use objective definitions of worth (such as official currency, or the fixed prices of socialist states) there is no one forcing their ideas on others. It is natural for different choices, and different abilities, and different goods, and different services, to be better in the judgment of each person. That is the natural diversity of human thought and human natures.

Diverse Expression and Decentralized Roles

Free exchange is wonderful; unrestricted interaction between individuals supplies more, better, and more diverse capital for the creation and achievement that is accomplished physically and mentally by each person, guided by self-interest. By what about that process of achievement in itself?

Let us not forget that the individual is the point, and not a temporary node in a larger network which is more important. We do not live as 'culture,' we each live as individuals. And it is the quantity, quality, and kind of our self-expression (which also creates what we exchange) that make that life greater and more fulfilling for each of us. But what self-expression is fulfilling to each one of us differs, of course, and it is only within full freedom of expression that every one of our natures can have room.

Instead of fighting human nature, a nature which amounts to the existence of different natures, Promethean capitalism allows each nature to be channeled beneficially by finding its own path. All too often, entire persuasions of humanity are discounted, undervalued, or even condemned. A successful society for the fulfillment of individual potential must necessarily accommodate at the very least every rough, descriptive categorization of innate personality.

This is not the case in any socialist or fascist society which is based on interference to maintain uniformity in income or possession. This oppression ignores the importance of those disposed to trading, banking, and other primarily economic achievement. Such a society is unnatural in that it endorses some mentalities at the expense of others' success.

Similarly unnatural is mistrust of persuasive, charismatic, and commanding personalities. Persuasion and leadership talents and dispositions are powerful, thus they are dangerous to authority, and have been absorbed into a very few socially acceptable routes. These routes are very much centralized for the perpetuation of the political system, such as law, military command, and political office. From the perspective of affecting and perpetuating oppression of other people, this has meant the corruption of essential and valuable traits. It is because of the consolidation of these personalities within systems of centralized power, in which the exercise and manipulation of political control is all that is usually allowed to them as an expression of their abilities, that they can now be expected to be devious or dangerous: a convincing speaker has been made into an unscrupulous lawyer, a clever bargainer into a sleazy politician, a skilled administrator into an anonymous bureaucrat, and a charismatic strategist into an authoritarian strongman. That we need managers to manage, and charismatic leaders to lead, and persuaders to convince is clear. That they must be drawn into support of political power is not by any means a given.

The way a mythical objective value is symbolically enshrined in official money is yet another example of the failure of centralized interference to allow for a diversity of expression. Of course those who value capital and profit which is not monetary will often feel ignored in such a society, including many artists and especially intellectuals. Once the only accepted social channel for intellectual expression was in priestly castes. Fortunately progress has been made. But similarity in ideas of value is still sought over difference, and even more importantly, is enforced in the form of monopolized currency.

Persistent critics of making money, who are desirous of equal distribution of the money others make, are invariably those who are not the sorts of people disposed to a personal interest in trading or creating monetary wealth. They are not traders or owners at heart, and since the self is our window to others, they assume that the apparent presence of a capacity or an interest they lack is false, anomalous, or unimportant. This same phenomenon is almost omnipresent — a failure to appreciate or understand people who are unlike oneself. Certainly the phenomenon of the trader or owner misunderstanding the artist, or the academic, or the ascetic, or the laborer who works for time spent with family, has existed as well.

Ludwig von Mises and other economists have observed that one reason so many intellectuals decry capitalism in any sense of the word is that they do not feel rewarded monetarily in a manner commensurate with their intellectual contribution. But why should they care to be paid in that sort of capital? Intellectuals do not enjoy the same sort of self-expression. For intellectuals (and this includes philosophers such as myself) to be compensated in accordance with what is of value to them, we need to speak of a different kind of capital and a different kind of currency. As long as we understand free exchange in terms of any sort of tradable commodity, including knowledge and ideas, there is a place for those who care for ideas more than cash. In the exchange of ideas even as it already exists in the more free parts of the world, intellectuals are naturally compensated with an appropriate commodity, if not with currency. The central control of currency, and with it the official estimation of value as monetary, has masked this however, and presented an affront to intellectuality.

There is a problem with matching the criticism of unequal wealth, and the simultaneous criticism that wealth is unimportant, and capitalism emphasizes wealth too much. This amounts to protesting wealth as a conceit, yet becoming obsessed with it. This is at worst hypocritical, and at best reactionary. To "get beyond [monetary] wealth" would require not focusing one’s thinking on it, whether in a positive or negative context.

Of course, intellectuals eat too, and have desires which only shared currencies can support. They can work to support what is more important to them, but what is needed to satisfactorily reward intellectuals (and artists) for their work within Promethean capitalism is the presence of voluntary support systems. The most common analog today is the university system, although other models are certainly possible. One of those is the possibility of supporting intellectual work through the charity model. Another is charitable or other private support based on the institution of the voluntary rule of ideas in a Promethean society. Any model ought to be based on a judgment of the merits of an intellectual’s work, and the benefits which may be derived from it, not simply the unquestioned elitist principle favored by some intellectuals: bluntly put, that they are entitled because they are intelligent.

Difference and Division of Labor

For the very natural reason of individual difference, individual independence to make economic decisions is most efficient as well as most free. The Austrian school economist Ludwig von Mises noted that making wise economic calculations requires ownership (and with it, knowledge) of production, rather than planning from a distance. Similarly, for each person to find, create, and shape the occupations, jobs, and enterprises suited to them requires control over these choices. The dispersal of different personalities in different economic positions, according to individual responses to opportunities and the pursuit of new opportunities, is rather like the natural dispersion of personality types, if more complicated. According to various psychological theories (Jungian, Myers-Briggs, enneagram, etc.) descriptions for innate types of personalities have been identified with different aptitudes and preferences. But just as personalities are more complex than these types, what must contribute to finding fitting, productive, and rewarding places for oneself in an economy is more complex and diverse than basic categories. Thus, people can usually think for themselves fairly well, but people rarely think well for others — by no means a point which is limited only to economic decisions.

One of Marx’s major criticisms of capitalism was that the division of labor to increase productivity (which he incorrectly identified as a recent development) had the effect of forcing the worker to adapt in reflection of the specific requirements of his labor, accommodating himself to better satisfy the task without resistance or complaint. In effect, this would be the worker losing part of himself to become a 'cog' in the machine-like process of production. (Obviously this complaint was more pertinent to the 19th century factory than to modern jobs.) Marx was wrong to attribute the dangers of this universal phenomenon of specialization just to progress within modern industry, but he was not imagining things.

While Promethean capitalism does not involve force in an economic context, it would still be possible to subjugate oneself to a role within the division of labor which is wholly inappropriate to one’s character, gradually becoming accustomed to that role, becoming smaller and fulfilling less and less of one’s disposition and potential. The solution is something else to which Marx also objected, with far less justification: rely on self-interest.

It is essential to make choices within a free market according to what one really wants. To allow oneself to feel pressured significantly by any other compulsion ruins the strength of a free market. This is true of smaller choices, such as deciding which goods to purchase, but it is far more important for long-term choices. One should not accommodate oneself to jobs one does not desire — such jobs must be considered temporary stepping stones, or means to support what is more important.

The circumstance of a free market tends to reward initiative and courage in making self-interested decisions (as well as ability). This is because it is based on arrangements which are voluntarily agreed by both sides to be of mutual advantage. If one side agrees without considering personal advantage as subjectively defined — and this need not be, and must not be in all cases strictly financial profit, in order to satisfy self-interest — then mutual advantage is defeated. In this sense, a free market, as with all voluntary action in life, is what one makes of it.

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