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Colbert Should Be a Lesson to the Left About How Capitalism Works

Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

Stephen Colbert is an important person right now, but not because he's currently at the center of a massive leftist temper tantrum. I think he can be pointed to as something a lot more educational. 

Colbert is a man who has a huge stage, but he's going to lose it because, despite having all the lights and cameras pointed at him, he failed to do something very simple, and that's follow the market. I don't mean the stock market, I mean the market of ideas, trends, and wants. 

He and his cohorts in the media, like Jimmy Kimmel, are pointing to Donald Trump as the reason he's getting canceled, as if there's some sort of grand backroom conspiracy going on, but it's not that deep. Trump isn't canceling Colbert; capitalism is, but before the left thinks it has one more reason to hate capitalism, I want to shine some light on something they probably never thought about, namely, what capitalism actually is.

I feel like too many people see capitalism as something it's not, and I don't even just mean the left. 

The left sees capitalism as an evil, nebulous force that's responsible for all the heartlessness and evil you see in the First World. Everyone else, including many people on the right, still sees capitalism as a system of exchange, and while they're not wrong, that's just scratching the surface. 

Capitalism is, at the end of the day, the people. 

The market isn't a mysterious force; it's supply and demand, and the people are at the center of that demand. If there is something the people want, and you have that want in supply, then you stand to make some good money by selling it to the people. If there is no demand, then your supply is worthless. At the end of the day, the people decide what is and isn't valuable. 

Tomorrow, the entirety of the world could suddenly decide that tree bark is more valuable than gold, and they would be right. The next day, gold could again become far more valuable, and the people would still be right. Value is what we say it is. 

During Donald Trump's first term, there was a high demand for anti-Trump sentiment, and the left was doing its level best to churn it out constantly. The Russia Hoax, highly edited footage, and doctored reports were hitting the air constantly, generating an "orange-man-bad" sentiment that permeated a great deal of our culture. This resulted in a sizeable demand for the media to scratch that anti-Trump itch. 

The problem is, as time went on, this trend wore off until it became something of a niche market. Hardline anti-Trump sentiment became old hat thanks to various events such as the Biden administration mucking up the country, Democrat incompetence, and the media continuously proving that it wasn't trustworthy, as more and more reports proved to be false. This anti-Trump market took major hits during COVID, where the media ran defense for lies we could see right in front of our faces, and then, of course, the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk, which took a mainstream information highway and stripped out the left-leaning censorship. 

You know the story. You were there. 

Trump won handily in the 2024 election, not just putting a well-defined end to the anti-Trump market but signaling that America was over a lot of the leftism that had permeated American culture, including DEI, CRT, and whatever Hollywood was trying to sell from its soapbox. 

Yet, many in the media refused to embrace the fact that the market had moved on. They still had a lot of anti-Trump sentiment in supply, and they were desperately trying to push it on a public that increasingly didn't want it. Regardless of all the flashing lights, panicked screeching, and forced jokes, the public just wasn't interested. 

Which brings us back to Colbert, a man who exemplifies how capitalism can punish someone for failing to adapt in a changing market. 

Even as Trump won the election and people were enthused about the new direction the country was headed, Colbert refused to change his product. He'd go live and spout the same anti-Trump nonsense he always did, and more and more people tuned out because it wasn't what they were interested in. 

What's more, as my colleague Brad Slager notes in his article, Colbert's price for hawking his product was egregiously high, and his success rate of sales was miserably low. CBS was taking annual hits in the millions of dollars: 

The Colbert budget was rather succinct, coming from those inside CBS. He has a salary of $15 million annually and a staff of 200. The show costs an astounding $100 million to produce each year, which averages out to almost $600,000 per episode.


Read: The Late-Night Mental Breakdown Continues – Jimmy Kimmel, Allow Me to Introduce You to Jimmy Kimmel


If you're running a lemonade stand that makes $1,000 annually, but the person you hire to run the stand is charging $5,000 a year and telling half the customers that they're stupid, horrible people while he's hawking lemonade that tastes awful, then you'd probably shut down that lemonade stand pretty quickly. 

It's not a conspiracy. It's not a shady backroom deal. Colbert just wasn't playing to the market while charging too much to do so. His show wasn't an entertainment program; it was a pulpit with an ever-shrinking congregation. 

And herein lies the lesson, not just to Colbert (who is likely too angry to learn it) but to everyone. Capitalism is not some evil monster, nor is it a failed system. It's just the short-form name we give to the act of people buying from and selling to each other. If your show, movie, or party fails, it's because market forces weren't interested. 

Colbert is just not an interesting person. 

Greg Gutfeld sure is, though

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