The free market grows and explores like an organic system, formed by billions of minute democratic decisions made by consumers every hour. Its unique ability to adapt means it can rise to any challenge, including environment crisis. Those who wish to contain this power - and to plan our futures from the centre -  are gravely mistaken, argues Madsen Pirie.

Like a virus, free market capitalism mutates to take advantage of new opportunities and to move into new territories. Unlike a pathogenic virus, however, it is symbiotic with human nature, and is one of the most benign institutions that human beings have ever created, perhaps even the most benign. This is the main reason why capitalism will survive and prosper after the pandemic: it is not a fixed thing, but something that has shown remarkable strength in adaptability and endurance, and in its ability to change with changing circumstances.

It was not created deliberately, but emerged as a consequence of the ways in which people behave towards each other. In only a few hundred years it has lifted almost all of humanity out of subsistence and starvation, and given billions of people the chance to seek and enjoy better lives. It enables people who will probably never meet to interact spontaneously with each other for mutual advantage. It has given humanity the wealth that has fostered advances in medicine and sanitation, as well as access to opportunities never available before.

Critics of free market economics, usually those who wish to see the world reordered to meet their own priorities, seize on virtually everything that happens to predict the imminent demise of capitalism and its replacement by an economy centrally planned in what they believe is a more intelligent way, one controlled by the “inputs of stakeholders and their representatives.” They rather miss the point that the unplanned spontaneity of free market capitalism is its major strength. It is what makes it adaptable, ready to change as times change, and to morph into a new version of itself.

Free market capitalism is one of the most benign institutions that human beings have ever created.

They also miss the point that this economic system is the most democratic one possible: people vote with their wallets and purses every day, rather than periodically at the ballot box. It is their decisions about what to buy that determine which companies will prosper and survive and which will not.

Commentators, including those involved in Davos, talk of the need for a “Great Reset” to the world’s economy, so that it can “rebuild itself sustainably” following the economic ravages wrought by the pandemic. They do not need to. The world's economy will reset itself as capitalism finds new ways to meet new demands. And it has already found new routes to sustainability, developing non-polluting and less-polluting fuels at a rate few thought possible. Moreover, the huge and ongoing reduction in the cost of renewables and alternatives offers the prospect that it can be done without reducing living standards. Manufacturers, moreover, are finding ways to produce more value with fewer resources. The smartphone uses a tiny fraction of the resources that it once took to perform all of the functions it can achieve.