Capitalism is NOT a dirty word.

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149. If capitalism is so great why does it need to be regulated?

If capitalism is what brings such great and wonderful things why the need to restrict and fence it in with regulations and laws? It should be able to provide us with a smoothly functioning economy without all the booms and busts that capitalism always has. It should be able to provide a good job for anyone who wants one and decent retirement. Instead you get swings of severe unemployment and the raiding of retirement funds by capitalists.

We all really know the answer. Capitalism does not work. It is no better than feudalism or slavery. It grew out of those economic systems and has all the same flaws. A few people get most of the good while the majority get most of the bad. The solution is to put in to the hands of the workers the means of production. The Soviet Union put the means of production into the hands of the state. They thought it would work because then the citizens could vote out the bad politicians. The state became the capitalist. The state decided what to do with the product, the surplus and the profits, not the citizens or the workers.

Democratic Socialism as practiced in parts of Europe is not any better. What they do is weave social services in among a capitalist economy and attempt to regulate capitalism more than in the US. The few still get most of the good out of it, just look at the British Queen. The middle class gets some basic necessities from the state like health care but even those services are being whittled away by rich capitalist who buy off politicians.

The work place needs to be democratized. The worker needs to be able to control the product and profits. That has never been tried in any country.