That's what they're there for

Mike Boyer, writing in FP Passport, resents Coca-Cola's communist-chic appeal to Chinese customers. He bitterly recalls the sense of Western capitalist triumphalism hat he felt when Russians started buying Coke back in 1990, and feels betrayed.

Earth to Mike: Why do you think U.S. corporations wanted to help topple Soviet communism? It was because they wanted to make money! The board of Coca-Cola never made it their professional goal to foster an ideology of personal liberty. They wanted Russians to give them money in exchange for fizzy flavored water.

China has proven (once again) that capitalism is not an ideology. It's just an economic system. And firms have once again proven that hey are pretty much the shuffling profit-seeking automatons that we economists have always always assumed them to be. If you want an ideology, don't look for it in bottles of fizzy flavored water. The ideology is called democracy.