Is Buying American Un-American?

Dr. Harry Binswanger of the Ayn Rand Institute wrote an article that I recently read, see if you agree with him on the topic that buying American is anything but American. His point was that America is a capitalist society where the individual and their success is at its essence.

Binswanger states in his article that: “Philosophically, Americanism means individualism. Individualism holds that one’s personal identity, moral worth, and inalienable rights belong to one as an individual, not as a member of a particular race, class, nation, or other collective.”  As a result, Binswanger makes the case that buying American, especially if the goods are shoddier or not as good a value as those from elsewhere, puts the success of “the collective” above that of individual.  And that, my friend, is what he rightly calls Marxist and socialistic.

Binswanger makes the point that in a real capitalistic system there are no losers as long as everyone is producing quality goods that others want.  Where things go awry is when people make substandard, overpriced, or obsolete products and then try to browbeat other people of their kind into buying their lower value items by appealing to their coutrymen’s sense of tribalism, as in “I’m one of your clan and those people you’re buying from aren’t”  That’s both xenophobic and, depending on the race of “the others”, could be racist.  And, to tell you the truth, it’s not fair to the consumers and plays them for fools.

From a theoretical perspective, Binswanger’s right.  However, we don’t live in a “theoretical” world.  We live in one that’s brutally realistic.  One where there is no equitable distribution of goods, services, technology, or resources.  So what if “Buy American” is socialist in its underpinnings.  It’s all rhetoric. What counts is people: you, your neighbor, the people over in Africa, the Chinese, etc. and it is the inequity in the standard of living around the world that’s the real problem.

If the Chinese and Indians had the same standard of living we do, no one would outsource jobs there because labor costs would be the same as here.  If Africans or Mexicans had the same standard of living we do, pharmaceutical drugs would not be cheaper over there than they are here.  If companies weren’t so greedy for constantly higher profits and people remembered that their finances are not just “all about them” but that every financial or business choice they make has global (yes, that’s right) consequences, maybe we wouldn’t be in the economic mess we are today.

That said, I don’t see the global inequity in standards of living flattening out any time soon, at least not in my lifetime.  So if that foreign product you’re dying for is basically the same quality, price, and reliability as one made in the US, then by all means “BUY AMERICAN”.  But then you’ll be buying with pride, not because you feel you have to keep money flowing to companies that sell things that don’t work or provide bad service.  As I remember, that was the hallmark of the USSR and we all know what happened to it.

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Editor’s Note

Dr. Barbara Ransom is a guest writer to The Web Authority Blog. She is a high level executive in the science field and resides in the Washington DC area. She is an avid blogger and interested in all things political.

Although you may not agree with her point of view, I think that you will agree that the article is well-written, thought provoking, and makes an interesting statement about what buying American really means.

As editor, I encourage you to click the comment button below and let me know what you think about today’s post and her point of view.