Reply #25: I certainly never said capitalism is perfect. [View All]

[Silent3]

I was merely reacting to the constant, strident anti-capitalism crap that comes out of some people around here. There's not a thing in what I've written that indicates that I think capitalism is any way close to perfect.

What I would say about capitalism is much like what Churchill said about democracy: it's the worst economic system, except compared to all of the others we've tried.

I think well-regulated capitalism can work fairly well, better than what we have now for sure. The main problem is that the wealth generated by capitalism is often used to influence the political process and weaken needed regulation. Even without corruption of that sort, our best-intending political leaders are going to occasionally pass stupid regulations with unintended consequences, simply because economics isn't anywhere near as predictable as we'd like it to be.

...which was created to replace feudalism

The way you say "which was created", you make it sound as if the development of capitalism was a deliberate by-design change. Capitalism resulted much more by natural cultural evolution than by design, from the growth of the merchant class.

As long as they remain democratic in nature, they sure can't suck more than either communism and capitalism.

What do you mean by "democratic"? Only the will of the majority, or, as the term is often taken to mean (to the extent people bother to think about this, which sadly isn't often enough) a balance between majoritarianism and constitutionally protected individual rights?

If you mean the latter, then you can't really get rid of capitalism, because much of capitalism arises automatically from individuals being fairly free to buy and trade their own labor and physical assets. If you aren't going to trample severely on individual rights, the most you can do is regulate what people do so that it isn't harmful to others (for example, owning a factory doesn't entail the right for you to recklessly pollute everyone else's environment with that factory), and, much as we do with balance of power between branches of government, we need to institute checks against excessive power gained through wealth.

I am just tired of the whole boom, bust, crisis, implosion, rinse, repeat movie we've been stuck in for a while now. It is getting boring...

I don't know if you'll ever be happy then. The ongoing drama of big ups and downs is a human dynamic which is probably hard to escape in any but the most primitive situations involving small numbers of well-dispersed people. The best we're ever likely to do is fix one particular problem for a period of time, like the way we managed to avoid a big economic crash for nearly eighty years after the Great Depression, until both memories fade and circumstances change enough that old solutions are either dismantled or no longer applicable.

I'd be far more afraid of an artificially devised, artificially imposed economic system that someone dreams up in a committee, thinking they've come up with a magic solution that will make everything automatically run smoothly, with great economic justice, forever.

Corruption will always arise, and then it will have to be fought back (never reaching zero). People will forget painful lessons of the past, or convince themselves things have changed enough that we don't have to worry about a particular problem from the past, and end up repeating old mistakes again. Things will change enough from the past the old solutions will break, or new problems will arise. Democracy will only insure that a majority of us can take the blame for our stupid mistakes, not that we'll have superhuman wisdom to avoid making big mistakes.