What is with the hate of capitalism? Is it due to ignorance?

[Meldread]

I do not understand some of the hatred of capitalism expressed by some folk here on this forum, but also elsewhere by other fellow lefties. I can only assume that the hatred is grounded in ignorance.

Capitalism is an economic system that focuses on private ownership, and it is often contrasted against socialism which is an economic system that focuses on state ownership.

A capitalist believes individuals are best suited to make choices regarding their own wealth. It generally assumes that people will act in their own interests most of the time. A socialist believes that the government is best suited to make the choice regarding an individuals wealth. It generally assumes that the government can better allocate the resources to benefit society as a whole.

The United States, contrary to popular belief, is not a purely capitalist nation. It is somewhat a mixture between the two, and in fact where I see the anger most passionate among others on the left is directed at some of the socialist aspects of the nations economic policy. (In particular at corporations.)

For example, bailouts for business goes directly against capitalistic philosophy. The government giving wealth to a business – whether through subsidy (such as farmers in Iowa) or bailout (AIG and huge failing banks) – is socialist. A capitalist would let them die because they've proven they cannot exist on their own.

However, that does not mean a capitalist cannot see the consequences of a business failure on society. To use the bailouts as an example, a capitalist would have put AIG and those big banks through some type of structured bankruptcy. Those businesses that were failing deserved to die.

While there is always a concern when the government interferes with the economy, unless someone is a laissez-faire capitalist there is no philosophical objection to regulation provided it is good regulation.

I would argue that capitalism – real capitalism – is anti-corporation. Not in the sense that large businesses should not exist, but in the sense that a capitalist believes that the system is most effective when there is major competition. This goes against the interest of any business which wants to dominate its current market. Thus, a real capitalist supports regulation that ensures that everyone is playing on a level field, and ensures that new businesses can easily enter the marketplace. That is good for capitalism.

A capitalist also does not have any major philosophical disagreement over consumer protection, so long as it is not being used as an excuse to shut out legitimate businesses. (Again with the exception of the laissez-faire capitalist who are a whole other pot of beans.)

I suppose the most major difference that I have with some other folks on the left is that I don't hate business. The job of a business is to make money. No more and no less. When it comes to the failings that are often blamed on business it is almost always as a result of the government. For example, a business might get around paying benefits to certain employees by calling them freelance contractors despite the fact that they are regular employees.

Someone might look at the business and call them unethical for doing such a thing (and they are), but the job of a business is to make money. By doing this they are saving the money they make and diverting it elsewhere that will hopefully provide them with additional money. The fault of this practice should not be laid at the feet of the business, but rather the government for creating a system in which that type of action can take place.

The government creates the rules by which everyone must play. When those rules are inadequate or created from corruption within the government then you get a system like our healthcare industry.

Sometimes I see fellow lefties saying the government should take over this or that area of our government. Yet, I cannot help but feel disbelief at statements like that especially after eight years of George W. Bush. There will come a day again in the future where the Republican's control the Presidency or both houses of Congress. Do you want a Republican overseeing some aspect of your life? I don't.

And for the record this post has very little to do with the healthcare debate. Since I am fairly certain that some people who disagree may attack me on that issue let me make my position clear: I support something similar to the French model. Contrary to popular perception in America the French have a model that is based off private insurance companies, the major difference being that they are all non-profit. It is not government owned such as in Britain or Canada.

One of the major sources of the problem in our healthcare system, outside of government corruption and stupidity, is the fact that health insurance companies are beholden to shareholders rather than policy holders. The two groups are in direct conflict. Competition in the healthcare market keeps prices low, encourages innovation, and ensures better quality healthcare overall. This is why the French model is superior to all others that I've looked into. Of course, I think we could improve upon it a great deal if we'd examine it with a critical eye.

[armyowalgreens]

1. " I can only assume that the hatred is grounded in ignorance."

I read that and immediately unrecced. Don't assume something like that. It completely discredits the rest of your argument.


On edit: It doesn't seem like you even know what capitalism or socialism is, let alone the difference between the two of them. Yet you were so quick to declare us all ignorant?

Fuck that. I'm glad I unrecced.


Do you honestly believe that the bailout was "socialist"? What a stupid thing to say.

[Meldread]

3. Of course it was.

You would call it capitalist? The government was clearly injecting itself into the marketplace and using public funds to prop-up institutions that it believed were necessary for the welfare of American citizens. That sounds like corporate socialism to me.

And you seem to take the meaning of ignorance incorrectly. I would define ignorance as a lack of knowledge, to be contrasted with stupidity - an individual with knowledge who refuses to use it. I wouldn't classify ignorance as a bad thing or even an insult, as we are all ignorant of many things (myself included).

But it's so nice that you take the time to bitch without even reading my post. ;)

[armyowalgreens]

5. No, it was not socialism. Nice try though.

Thanks for further spreading the right-wing hate rhetoric. As a socialist, I really appreciate the smear.

Government spending money on private bailout of industry does not equal socialism. It's an action independent of an ideology. It simply is. But the argument could be made that it is much similar to an action that would be taken under a fascist state.

What the fuck is "corporate socialism"? Do you realize how stupid that sounds?


Oh, my bad. You simply meant that we didn't know what we were talking about. That now makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.


It's not my fault that your first few sentences are a complete embarrassment to logic.

[Meldread]

9. I can feel the love through the internet tubes.

And just FYI - I'm not talking about individual socialist or capitalist ideologies, of which there are many in both camps. I am simply referring to the basic philosophy that underpins them both. Just because you are a socialist doesn't mean you're for the bailouts, I would have thought this would have been obvious, but apparently not for... some.

I'm rather certain that some laissez-faire capitalist would show up (though I doubt one exists on DU :P) and call me a pinko commie for suggesting that the government has a right (I would actually go further: an obligation) to have basic consumer protections.

[armyowalgreens]

10. You called the bailouts "socialist." That is a lie.

This isn't miscommunication. At best, this is a demonstration of your own ignorance.

I am against laissez-faire capitalism. I am also against more regulated forms of capitalism. It's not enough to simply provide "consumer protections". Government has a responsibility to control and operate vital industry and services as non-profit entities.

You are most certainly not a communist. You are also not a socialist. I'm not really sure what you are.

Excuse me for being a bit short with someone that so openly declares me to be ignorant when you are the one that is ignorant of the facts.

[MajorChode]

97. You called it a lie and that is a lie

Well, actually that IS a lie. Cornfused?

A lie is willful deceit. Obviously he believes it's true so it can't possibly be a lie.

At least some of the bailouts clearly fit the mold of socialism. If the government buys equity in a corporation with the promise that any profits will be redistributed to the general public (at least in theory), then it's hard to imagine that singular act as anything other than market socialism, even though clearly the intent is temporary economic interventionism.

[girl gone mad]

102. I don't agree.

Transferring debts onto the public balance sheet in an effort to save private bondholders is not an act of socialism, regardless of any promise of potential future profits. In this case those potential profits to the government are extremely vague and tenuous, at best. The bank officers will reap huge bonuses and the bondholders will get paid in full long before the taxpayers ever earn a dime of profit. We've only socialized risk in an effort to secure profits for private owners. I would call this is corporatism or even fascism, but it's definitely not socialism.

Transferring private assets onto the public balance sheet and then redistributing the income from those assets to the public sector would be socialism. What we did is essentially the opposite.

[MajorChode]

105. The motive you assume is misplaced

The effort was not to save "bondholders." The effort is to save the economy which includes Joe Millionaire and Joe Sixpack.

TARP has already repaid $151 billion back to the taxpayer, so there's a bit more than "potential" profits, there's some very real ones, including saving about 1 million very real jobs.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/CEA_ARRA_Report_Final.pdf

You can call it whatever you like, but calling it "corporatism" or "fascism" is simply misusing the terms out of either ignorance or in an attempt to provoke an emotional response.

It's impossible to say if the ARRA will have a positive or negative overall profit to the taxpayer when it's all over with. I'm optimistic about the economy in the next couple of years, so I suspect there will be an overall benefit, or at worst we will break even just like we did after the great depression, but the cost to everyone would have been far higher had we done nothing.

[girl gone mad]

118. Nonsense.

The financial bailouts were specifically designed to rescue bondholders, counterparties, commercial creditors, executives and various other crony capitalists. If the bailouts had been structured to save jobs, then hundreds of billions wouldn't have gone to overseas banks and bonuses for a few top executives. If you are honestly arguing that Paulson and the Fed crafted these programs to save jobs, then you must also believe they are the most incompetent people in the history of government since the bulk of the money was spent on very non-job-creating things, such as paying face value for essentially worthless derivatives.

We have not earned a dime on TARP. We are still out $150 billion according to the only analysis done thus far: http://ethisphere.com/ethisphere-tarp-index-report/

Why not say the bailouts saved 10 million jobs? That's about as easy to prove as your bogus claim that 1 million jobs were saved.

You call me ignorant, then proceed to make patently false claims regarding the bailouts. The cost could not possibly have been higher if we had done nothing. That's yet another baseless claim. The bailouts were sold to the public as a necessary evil to keep the banks lending, however, lending has consistently contracted in every quarter since we agreed to some $23T in financial handouts and backstops. The money was needlessly wasted.

[mdmc]

126. +1

it was "socialism" because it kept "fascist" institutions from failing.

[MajorChode]

133. Either you're ignorant or Geithner, Krugman, Volcker and others are liars

Guess which one I'm going with?

Cheers!

[girl gone mad]

135. 1. Volcker was not a proponent of most of the bailouts.

2. Krugman was all over the map during the crisis, but he consistently supported nationalization (which we didn't do, in case you are confused).

3. Geithner is a proven liar.


Nice attempt with the ad hominem. I get it, you can't argue on the facts.

Stiglitz, Galbraith, Taleb, Baker, are on my side in this issue. Does that make them igorant, too? How about http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/research/Papers/mortgage_protest.htm">400 of the nation's top economists who opposed the bailouts on grounds that it would unfairly use taxpayer money to subsidize a few investors who took bad risks?

[MajorChode]

138. This is entirely too funny

Your reason for dismissing Geithner is he's a "liar" and in the very next sentence you make accusations of ad hominem and an absence of facts. Then as "facts" you list people who you think are on your "side" in this issue (I seriously doubt if they have made any comments regarding whether the AARA fits the definition of socialism or not), and a link to a letter written about the previous administration's plan.

I suspect you weren't trying to be funny, but the irony didn't go unnoticed.

Cheers!

[girl gone mad]

140. Why do you keep trying to make this personal?

Geithner is a confessed liar. He lied on his tax forms. That is a fact.

This administration has continued the previous administration's bailout policies.

I've never heard the acronym AARA used in relation to financial bailouts, but considering that Galbraith and Stiglitz favor a more socialist economy, it's extremely unlikely that they would ever argue that our financial bailouts, which they vehemently opposed, were somehow socialist. Both wrote extensively that the bailouts were designed to benefit only a few private stakeholders at the expense of the rest of us. I would continue to argue that this is precisely the opposite of the stated primary ideal of socialism, which is to prevent wealth from concentrating in such a manner by redistributing profits among citizens. Any act that serves primarily to secure the private wealth of a few already wealthy individuals and institutions cannot be an act of socialism, by definition.

[MajorChode]

147. So pointing out the obvious is "personal"?

If your reasoning is fallacious, I'm going to point that out. If you think that's "personal" then I really don't know what to say to you other than you might want to grow a thicker skin.

Case in point. Here's how your logic works:

1) "Geithner is a confessed liar. He lied on his tax forms. That is a fact."
Your conclusion: Geithner lies about everything.

I'm not going to delve into the intrinsic details of Geithner's tax history. What I will point out is Geithner never "confessed" to lying, but rather making an unintentional mistake(whether it was unintentional or not is irrelevant). So by your own logic, you are a liar and can't be trusted on any subject.

So now your logic says that because Galbraith and Stiglitz like socialism and they didn't like the bailout, the bailout can't be socialism. That's like saying one can't be a communist if they don't love Stalin and Pol Pot.

[girl gone mad]

148. The bailout is not socialism.

Sorry, but it isn't. It's still capitalism. It may be state capitalism, where the state has a hand in determining the winners and losers as opposed to letting the free markets sort it out, but it is capitalism, nonetheless.

The means of production (also known as capital) are privately controlled; labor, goods and capital are traded in a market; profits are distributed to owners or invested in new technologies and industries; and wages are paid to labor.

Check, check, check and check. Capitalism.

Socialism refers to various theories of economic organisation advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterised by equal access to resources for all individuals with an egalitarian method of compensation.

Umm, no. This does not describe the bailouts in any way. The banks are all still in private hands. There was nothing egalitarian about the bailouts.

You may be confused because private industry has captured many of our regulatory agencies and these bodies now act largely as an arm of corporate America and no longer serve the interests of the people, but that is simply the way that our capitalist system has evolved in time. It now subverts democracy and uses every means possible to manipulates markets in favor of a select few private owners. That's why you have Bear Stearns given away in a sweetheart deal to JPMorgan while AIGs counterparties are paid in full. Some capitalists have gotten very skilled in using the government to perform their dirty work and take out other capitalists.

[MajorChode]

149. I'm confused? That is rich

The means of production (also known as capital) are privately controlled; labor, goods and capital are traded in a market; profits are distributed to owners or invested in new technologies and industries; and wages are paid to labor.

Check, check, check and check. Capitalism.

You didn't get one check, much less 4. The definition you provided was all or none and involves the entire concept of capitalism, not specific instances. It doesn't take into consideration if a particular action or program is socialistic. Perhaps you're confused and you think I'm saying our economy is now fully socialist because the government bought shares in publicly traded corporations. So to dispel all such misunderstandings I will state my claim isn't even within a cab ride of that.

Socialism refers to various theories of economic organisation advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterised by equal access to resources for all individuals with an egalitarian method of compensation.

Umm, no. This does not describe the bailouts in any way. The banks are all still in private hands. There was nothing egalitarian about the bailouts.

Once again you provide an all or nothing definition, but still you couldn't even manage to understand the very definition you provided.

1) public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources...
The government bought equity in for-profit corporations (aka capital) and they most certainly are administering and allocating whatever profits result from those investments.

Check

2) ...equal access to resources for all individuals with an egalitarian method of compensation.
When those equities are eventually sold, any gains both capital and dividend which they may have earned most certainly will be put back into the general fund. I don't know where you're getting your information, but those stocks the government bought most certainly aren't in private hands and if the profits are put back into the general fund, that certainly fits the definition of egalitarian.

Check

What you seem to be most confused about is how it's in the public interest for the government not to allow our banking system to collapse. Perhaps you think the word socialism has some stigma attached to it (and perhaps it does), so you reject the term solely based on those beliefs and you resort to creating your own definitions when your ad hominem and appeal to authority arguments were revealed as fallacious.

[girl gone mad]

155. We did not need to let the banking system collapse.

That's a straw man argument. The banks could have been nationalized, or we could have employed any number of solutions that didn't involve handing over trillions to failed banksters.

Again, we traded TRILLIONS for a small, non-controlling interest in a few banks. No one with a political education could honestly call this socialism. Yours is an odd definition of "public ownership". We have a minority stake in the common, not preferred, bank shares. These will end up worthless unless we keep pouring money into the insolvent behemoths. Private owners, along with officers and employees, get first dibs on all revenue. We're literally the last in line - the first loss position. If the bailout were structured in a socialist manner, taxpayers would have been the first in line to receive profits, not the last.

Since we grossly overpaid for this token "ownership" and any "profits" seen thus far have have merely been money funneled from the one or more of the Fed's other giveaway programs (TALF and PPIP, designed to be levered up 10x in order to move trillions worth of toxic assets from bank balance sheets and put them on our balance sheet, come to mind) this is hardly a model of socialism, though an uninformed teabagger might claim otherwise.

I didn't create my own definitions, those were taken from Wikipedia.

A bailout done solely to rescue private owners from their own mistakes is not, and never will be socialism. Transferring private debts onto the public balance sheet is the opposite of socialism. I have yet to see you address this point, or the fact that we are still losing money on TARP, and any supposed profits shown have come at the direct expense of taxpayers, savers, and the poor, through manipulated interest rates, backdoor bailouts and excess banking fees. Once again, the private owners are benefiting at the expense of the public, not vice versa. This is not socialism. It's capitalism at work.

[MajorChode]

160. No amount of obfuscation is going to prove your point

Certainly we could have done a number of other things including other plans which I would have preferred. But the reality is we didn't. So you can pretend what we did isn't working or won't work or can't work or whatever it is you're claiming, but that isn't consistent with reality.

As far as you calling all of this strawman, I most certainly agree. Would haves, could haves, what ifs, and whys have absolutely nothing to do with whether the plan was socialist or not. So any strawman that existed you started building some time ago. All of it is nothing more than red herrings as far as that argument goes.

If the government buys a company in it's entirety with the promise that any dividends, profits, or capital gains will be transferred to the general fund, that is a socialist program. I don't think we disagree on that point and if we do I don't see much need in further discussion with you. What you can't seem to grasp, and I'm not sure why other than willful ignorance, is that if the government buys a portion of a corporation in the form of an equity investment with the same promise, it is absolutely no different. It's really that simple and no amount of obfuscation on your part is going to change it.

[girl gone mad]

161. The government didn't buy any banks "in their entirety with the promise that..

any dividends, profits, or capital gains will be transferred to the general fund"

Sorry, but that didn't happen.

Of course it's different when the government takes a small equity position in a bank in exchange for tens of billions in bailout funds, as opposed to taking full ownership (under a socialist system, it would be in exchange for nothing). That you would argue otherwise speaks to extreme financial naivete. I have Apple common stock in my IRA. I don't think of myself as "absolutely no different" than Steve Jobs.

Our equity purchases were specifically designed to avoid hurting existing shareholders or deterring new shareholders. Socialists wouldn't concern themselves with the interests of private owners.

As Simon Johnson of the IMF said, the actions fell short of nationalization and represent only "strong government support for the private financial system." He said it's why the markets went up: "If you're really nationalizing, markets go down," because the private sector doesn't get market price compensation when nationalization takes place.

And if by 'working', you mean temporarily propping up useless zombie banks, then yes, by all means, the bailouts succeeded. But the banks are still insolvent. Though it has been shifted to the public balance sheet, most of the debt remains.

[MajorChode]

163. Duplicity doesn't help your argument either

If you're going to misrepresent my statements, I have no interest in continuing discussions with you.

I never claimed the government bought up any bank in it's entirety. Either go back and read my statements again and correct your error or I'll invite you to go piss up a rope. I don't play those games.

[Meldread]

169. I just want to understand your position more clearly.

So you believe the government should have bought up the banks entirely and nationalized them? You also agree with me that they are zombie banks, if I am not mistaken?

If this is the case, what do you consider to be the benefit of that approach?

Here is my point of view on how we should have handled the bailout situation involving the banks. A special type of bankruptcy procedure should have been created and the banks forced to enter it. Tax payer dollars would have been used to shore up assets stored within or held by the bank (savings, CD's, etc.), and that money returned to their customers. Mortgages would be frozen until new mortgage laws could be written. They would have then been auctioned off to non-bad banks, who could then renegotiate their mortgage with the bank who purchased it. (Guidelines for consumer protection would be set within the new law.)

There would be one overall goal in mind for the banks: Kill them and get their bad assets out of the system.

In the beginning I think we would have lost many more jobs. Instead of losing all the jobs upfront, what we've managed to do is slow the job loss down but draw it out even longer. It's the equivalent of trying to pull a band-aid off your arm. If you pull it slowly, it hurts a lot as you pull out hair after hair. On the other hand, you can rip it off quickly. It still hurts, but the pain is all upfront, you can recover and get over it much more quickly.

Killing the bad banks probably would have had us flirt with a depression, but it would have been relatively short, and no where near as bad as the Great Depression. Once the economy reached its equilibrium we would have resumed growth more rapidly, and those that lost jobs would have been able to find new ones sooner.

The credit market is still not lending the way it should, because they are still not sure how much cash they have on hand to lend. Outside of psychological factors, no one is still sure how much garbage is on the books and what it'll ultimately end up being worth. Thus, giving the banks money was a bad idea: it does them no good because they are not sure how much money they need.

This hurts small and medium sized banks that are good. These larger banks, in order to try and keep themselves solvent, want the business of customers that would otherwise go to them. And keep in mind if the government moved to protect customer assets (savings, CD's, mortgages, etc.) they would have ultimately moved them to a bank that wasn't bad, who then in turn would have begun lending the new cash out.

In the end, all we're doing is trying to re-inflate the bubble or at least prop it up. To give an analogy, it is as if someone's leg (the economy) had gangrene from a really bad infection. The government's solution was to try and isolate the infection knowing that the tissue of the leg was dead, in a vain attempt (a hope and a prayer) that they might find some way to save the leg. Luckily, through the injection of unhealthy amounts of antibiotics (tax payer cash) they managed to stop the spread of the infection... for now. My solution is simply to amputate the leg, because you can live without a leg – if the infection spreads the patient (the economy) could die.

So again, you believe the government should have purchased the banks entirely and nationalized them? If this is the case, what do you consider to be the benefit of that approach?

[KansDem]

152. Thank you for clearing this up...

I thought if we wanted to save jobs, the geld should have gone to the workers and not the bankers.

If anything, this meltdown only shows the failure of "Reaganism."

[Unvanguard]

33. Socialism is not an undifferentiated advocacy of statism.

The socialist solution would have been socializing those financial institutions "too big to fail" to make them accountable to the public as a whole (who are harmed by their risk-taking) rather than merely their shareholders (who won't notice costs externalized on others).

Bail-outs are the pragmatic policy of those who want to safeguard the capitalist system from its own (theoretically temporary) excesses.

[MajorChode]

100. But that's exactly what they did

If you buy just one stock in a corporation, you own a portion of that corporation. You're implying that the government would have to completely take over a company or corporation in order to "socialize" it. I don't believe the government has to control the company or corporation to fit the definition (even though in some cases it does). If the government owns the means of production and redistributes the income from that production to the public or for the public benefit, then the definition of socialism is appears to have been met.

[Unvanguard]

117. That's not the difference I'm pointing to.

The issue here is that government purchase of stock was intended as welfare, not as genuine ownership: the government is not saying, "These financial institutions should belong to the public sector now", but rather is granting them temporary relief with its purchases, with the ultimate aim of restoring them to private ownership, with no more public accountability (except perhaps through the general regulation of private enterprise) than before.

There is nothing at all socialist about this. It is really just a kind of subsidy: the government buys it when nobody else will, with the intention of selling it away later.

[mdmc]

127. +1

yes

[MajorChode]

134. It doesn't matter what you say, it matters what you do

Unless the whole concept of market equity changed and nobody put the word out, if you buy a stock in a corporation, you own part of that corporation, period. Granted the government may have abdicated all or most control interests entitled to them by that share ownership in a vain effort to pander to the right, but that doesn't change the fact that they did indeed buy part of those corporations. Certainly the intent was to prop up those financial institutions. That was the stated purpose all along and there's no surprises there. But you still are hanging on to the premise that just because the government hasn't exercised control over those corporations that it partially owns, they must not really own them. I can't agree with that.

[DireStrike]

157. Exactly, it matters what you do.

The government is exercising no control over the companies that it has "bought", for the most part. It is just handing out cash and hoping to be paid back later.

[girl gone mad]

82. As others have correctly pointed out,

the banking bailouts were not an act of socialism. It was corporatism at work, plain and simple.

We did not nationalize the banks, despite calls for such action from a number of brilliant economists and financiers. We did not force failed board members and executives out and replace them with government appointed officers. We did not require bondholders and shareholders to take their proper losses. We did not negotiate a fair or even reasonable deal for taxpayers, let alone a profitable one. Instead we rescued the private stakeholders through unfettered cash infusions and the vast transference of debt** from the private sector to the public sector. This was done to prop up the supposedly free market, capitalistic system, not to empower the state. The government acted to rescue the kleptocracy from its own mistakes, not to help the people (despite any false claims otherwise). The kleptocrats used government agents they themselves installed into power to pull off this bold stunt.

A socialist bailout would have been structured much differently than TARP, TALF, PPIP, TGIP or any of the other corporatist "privatize the gains, socialize the losses" programs were. The state would have gotten the kind of deal Warren Buffet got, and heads would have rolled (metaphorically speaking).

It strikes me that you probably haven't been paying close attention to economic matters over the past decade. No one with an ounce of common sense thinks that the banks are contributing to the welfare of the American citizens. I work in finance and I am happy that the average citizen has awoken from their state of mass debt-fueled delusion and are starting to grasp the evils of modern day "capitalism". This change in perception has been a long time coming.

**This is an act of corporatism. Transferring assets from the private to the public sector would be an act of socialism.

[mdmc]

125. I think that the properer term would be fascism

The Govt. didn't bail out the little people - the bailout trickled down to the little people - perhaps. I think it just floating the CEO's that ruined up..

[anigbrowl]

69. Give it a second read, AoW. The OP makes a lot of good points, and they're not all obvious

[Therellas]

2. A sucker is born every minute..... .

......isn't a positive way to run a business or a country.i think it has more to to do with the way business is done more than the textbook definition.There is a difference between working hard and making something of value to fill a need and taking advantage of peoples fears and ignorance to take their money. my 2 cents.

[Meldread]

6. Yes, but in the end who is to blame?

I suppose this is the major sticking point for me. I assume you are talking about the bailouts, because you're talking about taking advantage of peoples fears and ignorance in order to rob them blind.

Who in the end is to blame? I say it is the government, because they are the ones who created the system which allowed those businesses to operate the way they did, and they are the ones who advocated on behalf of those failing businesses to the American people, they are the ones who wrote the check and handed over the money.

I don't view a business as a person. I view it like a machine. It is cold, hard, uncaring. It has no emotion and no ethics. It's only purpose is to survive, and it survives by making money. You can't expect a machine to have feelings or care about people. A machine only does what it is programmed to do by its software. When the software (created by the government) is bad, then there are bad outcomes. If the software is good and up-to-date everyone benefits - the government, the businesses and the people.

The alternative is to turn over control of private industries to the government, but that seems illogical to me: if they cannot regulate a private market, why should they be allowed to run it?

[Therellas]

11. Profit motive

John Stewart said the other night corporations aren't immoral they are amoral.This is true.I hadn't thought of it like that.
However they are set up to function as "individuals" .... getting the same rights .
I'm not sure what that's called but I'm sure its the start of all the problems.

[Meldread]

14. If I am not mistaken corporate personhood is being debated in the Supreme Court right now.

However, yes I would consider any business to be amoral. To go back to my machine / computer analogy. A business has one objective: to make a profit. That's it. If there is no profit there is no business, and the drive to make a profit will often lead to unethical things taking place. That sole objective is like the hardware of the business. The government provides the software by outlining what is and is not acceptable business practices. When the government fails to do it's job, or acts in a way that is corrupt then it leads to bad things happening.

However, on the flip side, the alternative is to do what? I would assume it is to have the government step in and take control of a sector of the market. However, my line of thinking is this: if the government cannot properly regulate a private marketplace why should they get to run it? If bad outcomes were the result of the governments previous work trying to handle a private marketplace, then I would be willing to wager bad outcomes would continue to take place when it is controlled by the government itself. It would also create many additional problems.

As to Corporate Personhood... there are a few issues there that are of real concern. Basically, in a nutshell, it's the belief that corporates should be treated like people. This means they'd be entitled to all the same rights as people. Obviously, I don't view corporations as a person. There are some legitimate reasons for a corporation to exist, but there needs to be constraints in place to prevent corruption in government - which in turn results in corporatism and not capitalism.

For example, I believe it is a mistake to allow corporations to take a stand on political issues. Their rights to free speech should be limited in the public arena. This would mean things like those pro-oil company commercials would end. I also don't believe corporations should have the right to have any economic interactions with those running or holding elective office. Nor should someone who recently lobbied for a corporation be allowed to run for office until ten years of no lobbying, nor should a lobbying job be offered to a retired politician or a member of their staff for ten years after retirement. Other rules should be in place as well, but if corporations are viewed as people then many of these things would be seen as an infringement upon their rights.

[Bluenorthwest]

26. If business is a machine...

it is a machine made of flesh, of human beings. You are the business you do, and you are the way you do business. Claiming that ethics are shut off when a human does business is simple self service, a wank. What you do in business, is done by you.

[treestar]

44. This is why we need some wealth redistribution

the right wing purists are living in lala land when they argue as if the free market always rewards hard work and persistence. It doesn't always do that justly. There is unemployment, people who want to work and can't find work, and that can be real and not due to laziness or whatever the right wants to attribute it too. Conversely, some people get lucky and that's the reason they have $$, not their special talents.

So some extent of redistribution is not the "theft" they are always ranting about.

[surrealAmerican]

54. Going a bit further ...

... It is always in an employer's best interests to get the most work for the least money from their employees. That means both hiring a minimum number of employees, and paying each one as poorly as possible. This is why jobs get "outsourced", illegal aliens are hired, and unions are prevented from forming.

We need government regulation to prevent the hard-working employees from being exploited by self interested employers.

[bertman]

86. BULLSHIT!! It is NOT always in an employer's best interests to get the most work for the

least money from their employees.

Yes, you are truly a surreal American, if you believe that crap you just posted.

Maybe in your limited experience you have not learned that MANY business owners value their employees and pay them the best wages that the market will bear because they want them to continue being great employees. Maybe you don't understand that training a new employee is a very costly proposition, so business owners try to reward those who do their jobs well. That often means that the cost of the product may be higher, but if the customer/client satisfaction level is high, they will gladly pay for it.

I am offended when someone says some baloney like you just posted. Certainly in many businesses there is a drive to pay the lowest possible wage, but ALL is inaccurate and unfair to the business owners who are fair-minded and who value their employees.

[BzaDem]

103. I think you are missing the broader point.

The poster said that a business will get the most work for the least money. That doesn't mean paying each one minimum wage. Large bonuses might be involved, yet the business is still trying to get the most work for the least money. If you plotted a graph of net work vs. wages (where net work takes into account wages), the goal of an employer is to find the amount of money that maximizes net work. That amount of money might involve somewhat high salaries and bonuses. But they are not going to provide more money than they know is necessary to maximize net work.

Yes, there are some business owners who are altruistic and will pay more than they need to, even if the net work is lower. But that is not how business behavior works by and large.

[bertman]

113. The poster said "... It is ALWAYS in an employer's best interests to get the most work for the least

money from their employees. That means both hiring a minimum number of employees, and paying each one AS POORLY AS POSSIBLE." (Capitalized words were used by me for emphasis.)

Your argument, while correct in some respects, does not address exactly what the poster said and how it was said. "It is ALWAYS in an employer's best interests to get the most work for the least money. . ." As I tried to explain in my reply, that is not ALWAYS the case. There are many employers who pay their employees more than the prevailing market rate (what I would interpret to be the least $ one can pay for a certain type of work), and there are many reasons for this: a sense of fairness toward the workers; an effort to entice the best workers to the workplace; a desire to provide a monetary incentive for better job performance (not as a bonus, but as a wage/salary); an expectation that the higher wage will create a more loyal employee with a better attitude toward his/her work and his/her employer.

Then the poster said " . . . and paying each one as poorly as possible." That really struck a nerve. I realize that is the perception that many people have of how business works. I also realize that MANY companies use that philosophy, especially in the world of big business. But, there are many of us business owners who would never consider paying anyone who works for us "as poorly as possible". We are not computers that spit out cost analyses that must be followed to the letter in order to make a profit. We are human beings who know the needs and wants of our employees and who care about them and empathize with them. In many cases, we have been in the same jobs that our employees are currently working, so we know the stresses and demands of the job; therefore, we make it our goal to provide a better work environment and a better pay scale than we might have had. Sometimes the market mitigates against our goals, but we try to keep the welfare of our employees in the forefront of our business model because THEY are the ones who make our business a success and upon whom we rely to keep our customers happy and to produce a top-quality product.

One element of business ownership that has not been mentioned in this thread is the relationship of what the market will pay for a product versus what a business owner can charge for the product, which bears directly on what the business owner can pay to his/her employees in wages and benefits. I won't go into that now, but suffice it to say that during a recession such as we are now experiencing, it is much more difficult to maintain good wages and benefits when there are fewer sales of the product.

Edited to add: Anyone who buys his/her stuff from WalMart, should understand that those cheap goods cannot be produced by workers in America who are being paid good wages and good benefits by their employers. So we each make decisions every day about how we want American workers to be paid.

[surrealAmerican]

107. I'm sorry to have offended you.

I did not say ALL business owners act like that, I said it was in their (financial) best interest in a capitalist system to pay as little as they can for as much work as they can get. That does lead to problems for employees, especially in larger companies.

Obviously not everybody behaves like that. People are more than financial beings, and need to live with themselves and others as part of a community. Good business owners have goals beyond making as much money as possible.

[bertman]

114. surrealAmerican, thank you for your reply and your apology. Please read my response

to the post by BzaDem just before your reply.

Your last paragraph sums up most of what I was trying to say. I appreciate your sensitivity to the fact that many of us who are business owners want to offer our employees a safe, pleasant work environment where they can make good money and have good benefits.

Cheers.

[Selatius]

4. I think a major misconception is that socialism necessarily means state ownership.

There are several very strong tendencies on the left that are socialist in nature yet eschew state ownership of the means of production in favor of a more decentralized arrangement (i.e. a labor co-op that is owned respectively by the workers). This has been an extremely significant rift on the left for quite some time. In fact, since the First International was convened. Back then, it was a philosophical argument between Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin.

The revulsion against capitalism isn't against capitalism per se, although partly it is, as it is against corporatism, which also favors private enterprise over state control. The big difference is that corporatism advocates the blending of state and corporate power.

The bank bailouts have been characterized as socialism. I would agree except for the part that socialism, even in its narrowest definition, has the prerequisite of labor/worker input into the decision-making process. A state that literally owns all the means of production yet offers no political voice to the people is just another tyranny flying a red flag. People who have bled and died in the name of socialist reforms would bristle at the notion that it is socialism. More likely, they would call it stalinism, not socialism.

As far as capitalism goes, there's no real prerequisite in any definition of capitalism that says there must be a functioning free market mechanism. A situation where one person who isn't a governor or some other agent of the government who owns everything deserves the appellation of capitalist as much as the appellation of monopolist.

It seems in every situation where market place competition is allowed to occur with no anti-trust regulation, a monopoly or, more commonly, an oligopoly emerges. In such a situation, the pricing mechanism that helps people determine supply and demand is essentially broken.

People suffer as a result, sometimes tremendously. It is from this suffering that hatred forms.

[Meldread]

12. I would agree on many points.

There are many different ideologies that have grown out of the roots of capitalist and socialist philosophy.

That being said, I think the majority of the hatred often misdirected at capitalism is really aimed at corporatism. I personally see the root of corporatism in the United States stemming from a corrupt and ignorant government, and thus the anger is most appropriately aimed at the government rather than a particular philosophy.

As I said in another response here, the government sets the rules of the marketplace in this country. If bad things are taking place in the marketplace, whose fault is it? The business who's allowed to do things almost any fool would call unethical or harmful to the economy as a whole, or the government who simply allows it to take place either through incompetence or corruption?

I personally find the government at fault, and I worry that the anger directed at capitalism as a whole distracts people from the real culprit. If elected officials are allowed to escape blame then that only encourages the broken system to remain in place.

[xfundy]

7. It is to laff. Laff, laff.

Textbook definitions rarely work in the real world. And astroturf morons always fail. As you did!

Larf, larf. And co-opting the gay flag was classic FAIL.

[Meldread]

15. Are you really claiming that I'm not gay?

If so that's perhaps the most stupid thing I've seen on DU ever, and I've been a member since 2002. And I am also very much gay. ;)

[Robb]

24. You are impressing no one. nt

[droidamus2]

8. Difference

Some may not put the ideal of capitalism down but as in any economic philosophy there can be a large difference between the ideal and any particular implementation. Capitalism as practiced in the United States has become a survival of the fittest where the fittest try to control everybody below them for their own benefit. Some of the assumptions of the pure economic theory leave out influences that effect the way it works. For example, people make decisions that are to the benefit leaves out the ability of those with lots of resources using the media to influence people into believing something is good for them when it real isn't i.e advertising and Fox News. Also, you can't look at the economic theory without seeing its ramifications for the political realm. When the economic theory allows an inordinate amount of resources to be acquired by a small number of people who then turn around and use it to influence the political sphere for their own benefit there is a problem and that's where government oversight and regulation come in.

[Captain Hilts]

13. Yes, a lot of it is ignorance. 'Capitalism' has many forms. nt

[blindpig]

28. Yet it is still capitalism

Call it corporatism if you wish, it is the same beast. That so-called golden age, the 50's through the early 70's was more a product of historical circumstances, the destruction of every other industrial base in the world after WWII. We can point to the ameliorative aspects of the New Deal, but the rollback began as soon as the emergencies of the Depression & WWII ended with the passing of Taft Hartley and continues today. Same thing happened to TR's 'trust-busting'. There is no taming this beast, it's internal logic will not allow it, it must be killed.

[Captain Hilts]

35. I lived in the comfort of socialism in the military community and the horror of unbridled capitalism

in 1990s Moscow.

I'm an unreformed New Dealer.

[appamado amata padam]

16. I agree with some points -

I am not categorically against all capitalism. Our particular system has just run amok. Most of the sustainable and honest business practices have gone out the window. Like any system invented by humans, it's susceptible to human frailties.

But yeah, maybe you should take "ignorance" out of your subject line. Doesn't exactly encourage a diplomatic tone to the dialog. Ignorance is really the "other side's" forte.

[Hoopla Phil]

17. Because the pursuit of profit has been successfully vilified.

[uncle ray]

41. perhaps you should trade in your socialist Army avatar for a capitalist Blackwater avatar?

it's not the pursuit of profit that is vilified, it is the pursuit of profit as the sole goal at the expense of all other considerations which is vilified. a not very subtle difference that many seem to miss.

[Name removed]

108. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[rug]

18. Hardly.

Capitalism is not based on private property rights and personal freedom and initiative.

It is based on the accumulation of capital.

Capital negates everything mentioned above.

The process of transforming property into capital rarely involves a sole, noble individual with a bright idea.

Capital thrives best in a corporate structure. Human interests fall before the further accumulation of capital.

Capitalism deserves every epithet ever used to describe it

[TK421]

75. +100

edited to add: for making that perfectly fricking clear

[JackRiddler]

116. Yes. Well and simply put. Thank you.

[bread_and_roses]

119. Amen, Brother. I call these Capitalist apologists the "if only's"

"If only" Capitalists would behave morally and humanely and think long term and value their workers and foster sustainable economies and and and.

And if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, as they used to say.

[mdmc]

128. 1

[CJCRANE]

19. "Making a living" vs "Making a killing".

I don't the answers but it seems to me that's the choice we face.

[notesdev]

20. Most are too young to remember capitalism in the USA

but I remember it. What we have had for the past 30 years or so I'll call by its rightful name: fascism.

You can call that pile of dog shit a rose, but it's still a pile of dog shit...

[HughBeaumont]

22. And, some just answer it for you.

Toss in a little "necessity profiteering" and we have . .. 2009. The AFTERmath of the putrid fruit of Republican/Reagan/Corpronomics.

It really makes one wonder who's to blame . . . the politicians for foisting and enabling this spectrum of unmitigated greed, or the Dumberican public for being duped to believe it will work for them (if we just "give it TIME") and putting the greedmongers back in office every four years?

[Robb]

25. Well said. nt

[anonymous171]

79. Capitalism died in the early 1900s.

Prior to that, life in America was much much worse.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

21. Mostly

it's due to understanding that the criminal system responsible for the piling up of bodies deserves all the loathing one can summon. Must the bodies reach the sun before you see it?

Capitalism sucks

All of this qualification, 'laissez faire capitalism', 'corporate capitalism', is beside the point. Capitalism will resist all regulation, under pressure(fear of revolution)they will back off for a while, the New Deal, but they always come back for more, more, more. Same thing happened after Teddy Roosevelt's progressive reforms and trust busting. Even more than rust, capitalism never sleeps. It will always seek the maximum profit, to the detriment of anything that gets in the way, workers and environment be damned. It's like keeping a rabid baboon, you can cage it and chain it but that suckers gonna get loose and cause havoc. Best to put it down.

Even a Blind Pig can see that.

[treestar]

23. It needs to be regulated because people don't always make the right

choices. And there are the cheaters and frauds.

But I see your point. Sometimes on DU I see a hatred of business for business, of corporations just for being corporations.

A business has to make money. Otherwise, it can't hire anyone. So those who want to just crush the corporations are talking about putting a lot of people out of work and are having no empathy for those people. They act as if every company is rich and just made of up the very top executives and pay no attention to the fate of the thousands who work under them.

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Kaleva]

27. Rec'd because OP expresses a different point of view-well written.

[scheming daemons]

45. Agreed. Reccing for the dialog, even though I disagree with much of the OP

[Warren Stupidity]

29. Comrade, there are some points of disagreement I would like to discuss with you

"hatred of capitalism" - we think that the current system of the world, whatever label you want to put on it, is toxic to humans and other living things and appears to be a system that benefits the few at the expense of the rest of us. It is also a system that does not appear to be under democratic control, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary.

"elsewhere by other fellow lefties" - I doubt that you are in fact 'of the left' considering the content of this essay. A minor point though.

"socialism which is an economic system that focuses on state ownership" - a bit of cherry picking in order to position capitalism as merely 'private ownership' (of what though?) and as the opposite it seems of one specific form of socialism. I agree with Mr. Moore that what we who really are lefties are talking about is democracy vs plutocracy, about popular control over all of our institutions and not just a facade of control over the de jure institutions of the state. Democratic socialism within a mixed economy is not about state ownership of private enterprise it is about democratic control of our society.

"A capitalist believes individuals are best suited to make choices regarding their own wealth." Is that really what 'a capitalist' believes? "A socialist believes that the government is best suited to make the choice regarding an individuals wealth." Ah there you go again, painting socialism as authoritarian and the current system of the world as somehow anti-authoritarian. The largest capitalist nation on earth is a totalitarian state. Our nation of individuals making choices regarding their own wealth is one short step from overt fascism. I see no evidence anywhere on the planet that correlates 'capitalism' and 'individual freedom'. Here is a clue to another fellow lefty: we believe in democratic control over our lives. We reject the current system as a sham of democratic institutions that are a facade, a very thin facade, that papers over a kleptocracy that runs and rules the planet for the benefit of the few.

"I would argue that capitalism – real capitalism – is anti-corporation" and you would have to argue based on some ideal rather than the reality as the reality is quite at odds with your right-libertarian utopian nonsense.

"A capitalist also does not have any major philosophical disagreement over consumer protection" except of course that they have fought every effort to protect consumers and regulate their profit making tooth and nail, and even when they lose a battle they just turn right around and corrupt whatever regulatory institutions are established. Again you are off in your right-libertarian utopian fantasy world, that has nothing at all to do with the system of the world that we actually inhabit.

"Sometimes I see fellow lefties saying the government should take over this or that area of our government." A humorous typo, but perhaps to the point. Yes I think it would be quite an improvement if we could actually have democratic control of this or that area of our government. The fact that we do not have democratic control over our government is part of the problem us 'fellow lefties'. which by the way I am now quite convinced does not include you, are struggling with.

"Yet, I cannot help but feel disbelief at statements like that especially after eight years of George W. Bush. There will come a day again in the future where the Republican's control the Presidency or both houses of Congress. Do you want a Republican overseeing some aspect of your life? I don't."

Classic. You are kidding, right? No of course you aren't. You are that odd fellow lefty that thinks that socializing the health insurance industry, for example by expanding medicare to everyone, means that the gummint will be telling you what doctor to go to, and that even if the government were telling you what doctor to go to that would somehow be worse than CIGNA telling you what doctor to go to. 'fess up comrade, a lefty you are not.

Oh my.

[MadHound]

30. Sorry, but this isn't capitalism that we're living under

This isn't some sort of mix or blend as you claim. This is crony, corrupt, corporate capitalism, an entirely different construct.

The past thirty years of deregulation has done drastic harm to this country and to the vast majority of Americans. We need to reverse that trend.

I think that you are overstating your case and making gross generalizations. Furthermore, your contentions such as "A capitalist also does not have any major philosophical disagreement over consumer protection, so long as it is not being used as an excuse to shut out legitimate businesses." are grossly naive. I suggest that you educate yourself, starting with Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine." We're living through it right now, I suggest that you become familiar with it.

[davidpdx]

72. Madhound, I'm in the process of reading that right now

It is a real eye opener.

[L0oniX]

31. After you have enough money, it's not enough. Now you must have power.

Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, & over these ideals they dispute & cannot unite--but they all worship money.
- Mark Twain's Notebook

[Unvanguard]

32. The French health care system relies on government insurance for most health care costs.

Private insurance is supplementary.

Also, responsibility for unethical behavior always rests primarily on the actor and only secondarily on those who fail to stop him or her (or it). It makes no sense to say that the abuses of businesses are the government's fault because it doesn't do enough to stop them: no, it is the fault of the businesses who engage in them, and the logic of the capitalist market makes such abuses fairly inevitable and very hard to prevent. The moment the benefits to profits exceed potential legal costs, even the law is not a barrier.

[Zodiak]

34. While I appreciate the attempt at dialogue

The assumption of ignorance was probably a mistake.

I would also like to point out that blaming the government exclusively is a little over-simplistic. After all, do you blame the government that fails to regulate, or do you blame the corporation that bought all of the members of said government? Both are to blame, because in the United States these days, they are one and the same. Take a look at how many members of Congress have been CEOs, corporate lobbyists, bankers, and bigtime investors.

We are a corporatist state with very few trappings of democracy left.

I suppose one could blame the people, but I have a hard time blaming people who are led by the nose through lies, fear, and a fairy-tale narrative of who we are that does not comport with reality.....brainwashing also provided by our corporate powers that be.

Do I hate capitalism? No, but the way we practice it doesn't seem to be working out. I do hate the fact that Americans WORSHIP and IDEALIZE capitalism as if it were codified in our Constitution to the detriment of every other economic philosophy, most of which Americans are not even familiar with. Some of those other philosophies may work better in some sectors.

[datasuspect]

36. if you earn a paycheck/trade your labor for wages

you are not a capitalist. you are outside.

[Gabi Hayes]

38. in a few more decades, all you capitalism-loving yutes out there ask

yourselves why New York City's underwater (along with most of the rest of the plantet's coastlines), or why there isn't any water left in the US West of the Mississippi

ask yourselves how it got that way

is that simple enough for you?

[Gabi Hayes]

56. as in:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6627507&mesg_id=6627507

[branders seine]

39. You are focused on symptoms. Capitalism is the underlying virus.

Capitalism progresses like the disease it is. In order for it to work even superficially as well as its proponents pretend it works, it either need full-on corporate welfare (like we have now in many sectors) or it needs to be regulated to the point that it becomes more like a form of private socialism.

Capitalism is by far the worst thing that ever happened to our species, with religion (not faith--religion) a close second.

[Trajan]

40. I love when those who promote Capitalism

Couldn't see to supporting this website ....

I love your attempt to use 'laissez faire' as the whipping boy, as if to detach from it and use it as a proxy for all that's 'bad' ... well, you seem to embrace it in other words even as you 'condemn' it ...

There are many problems with the capitalist system, and while I personally agree that some form of regulated capitalism is probably best on a pragmatic basis, this little paean of yours is cloying and self aggrandizing ....

[cliffordu]

42. predatory capitalism, disaster capitalism and unregulated speculative capitalism

are complete disasters.

Which type are you defending??

[leftstreet]

43. Is this satire?

:shrug:

[scheming daemons]

46. It's a point of view... expressed in a cogent manner. We can disagree with it without vilifying...

..the author.

[leftstreet]

49. Well, for a defense of capitalism I guess it's fairly readable n/t

[ipaint]

47. No, it's due to a growing lack of ignorance. n/t

[laughingliberal]

48. Capitalist or not, a system that values profit at any cost by any means

is evil and detrimental to workers and consumers. As I see it most of our problems could be solved if everyone learned the meaning of one word: enough. I majored, for a couple of years, in business. Imagine my shock, years later, when a company I worked for was unhappy with my location due to only posting 40% profit.

[Usrename]

50. It is mostly semantics. I think you mean free enterprise.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6634641

[LWolf]

51. As others have already pointed out,

The last few decades in the U.S. have not been "capitalism," but corporatism and fascism disguised as capitalism.

No wonder people hate it.

Also, already pointed out, there are forms of capitalism that are hate-worthy.

That answers your question.

Here's one for you:

What is with the hate of socialism? Is it due to ignorance?

I encounter more people with an unreasonable fear and hatred of socialism than I do capitalism.

[RagAss]

52. Uhhhhhhhhh.....it didn't work.

[alarimer]

53. Because of the excesses of capitalism.

The exploitation of workers, the fact that we have had to fight tooth and nail to get any little crumbs from the bosses: a 40 hour workweek, vacation, benefits, etc. Capitalists would enslave people if they could. They DID enslave people and in fact still do. That is the preferred option, actually. Capitalists would love to not pay people at all.

Let's see why else I hate capitalism:

Environmental destruction. Capitalists care not one whit for the environment. Again we have had to fight these pigs in order to get environmental protection at all.

Bribery of officials, otherwise known as campaign contributions. Our elected officials are allegedly elected by us, the voters. Yet they almost exclusively do the bidding of the corporations. Why is that, do you think? Could it be because the corporations throw more money their way in the form of legalized bribery? I think so.

[tjwash]

55. Yeah. Let me know when we actually convert to capitalism in this country.

Everybody knows that human beings are basically driven by selfishness and motivated only by the accumulation of money. What we so lovingly refer to as "capitalism," is nothing but the human status-quo.

You can even go to the Fall of the Berlin wall and collapse of the USSR. What the corporate media attempted to spoon-feed us aside; neither one of those was about a desire for more freedom. It was a desire for more money, and more material things. They wanted what they heard all of us had here west of them.

That said...what happened to capitalism here in the United States, is what happens to everything else historically. Extremism takes over. We were once proud of being what was called a "pluralist" society (a little of this and a little of that). We did at one point (under Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ) have a fair and reasonable balance between corporate greed and financial regulation.

Then of course...the emergence of Ayn Rand who popularized the dollar as God in that hack writing style of hers. Milton Friedman pops up as the intellectual Father of no rules at all, popularizing the corporations can do whatever the fuck they want-whenever the fuck they want-to whomever the fuck they want model they love to follow today. Alan Greenspan emerges as that memes most recent administrator. The Republican Party becomes the main cheerleaders of this way of thinking, Ron Paul jumps on stage as today's primary Randian-free market-social darwinist-handjob advocate, And of course...Ronald Reagan, who made the corporate propaganda easier to swallow for the "intelligent" voting public.

What we are left with now, is a flailing system of greed and corruption, that basically states that those who already have it, shouldn't just be satisfied with more of it, but they should get ALL of it. Any interference now, is met with a barrage of republican propaganda and vitriol that accuses them of socialism, communism, marxism, (like any of those are a truly bad thing), then if they really hate you, they break out the fascism and nazi tags, and generally label you an American hating traitor that should move to the middle east.

[Baikonour]

57. Capitalism inevitably leads to corporatism, which leads to fascism.

What's not to hate about an extremely flawed system?

Besides, real capitalism in America died years ago. What we have now is crony capitalism.

[grantcart]

58. discussions about capitalism and socialism have become almost

impossible because the terms now have such broad and disparite understandings.


It is entirely possible for one person to be talking about capitalism and another person talking about socialism and they are both talking about a system that has a market that is controlled by enlightened regulation and some functions carried by the state.

[fishwax]

59. It's not ignorance. I think they're reacting to capitalism "in practice," while you're defending

capitalism "in theory." (Well, not just "in theory," but in how it has come to be practiced--as a mixture of capitalism and socialism--thanks to a robust opposition to capitalism-as-practiced over the course of the 20th century.)

I also think, as others have noted, that there are some conflations in your OP between socialism and statism. For instance, it's not the case that "The government giving wealth to a business ... is socialist." It socializes the cost, but not the benefit. The bailouts did nothing to change the fundamental private ownership of capital. In fact, it injected capital (public capital) into the prevailing system of private ownership. That's not socialism. Capitalists weren't necessarily opposed to the bailouts (not saying there weren't exceptions)--but when people started talking about attaching strings (caps on executive salaries, for example) ... then we heard cries of socialism. :rofl:

You are correct in your assertion that the United States isn't purely capitalism, but mixes socialism and capitalism. But you're incorrect about capitalism's reception to regulations--it's true that capitalism can accept regulation with respect to ensuring competition (though even these are resisted by some forms of capitalist influence), but regulations to protect the consumer or to protect labor are socialism, and have been VIGOROUSLY resisted as such by the forces of American capitalism (in practice) at every single step. This is true of things like:

Child Labor Laws (That's SOCIALISM! the capitalists cried)
Regulation of unhealthy food products, patent medicines, etc. (That's SOCIALISM!)
The minimum wage (SOCIALISM!)
OSHA (SOCIALISM!)
The right of labor to organize (SOCIALISM!)

And so on ... In each of these cases, these essential safeguards were (a) paid for in the blood of labor and (b) explicitly oppositional to the practice of capitalism and strenuously opposed by the forces of capital.

Now, some would argue (and they'd generally be right) that the ultimate goal of the politicians who oversaw the implementation of these regulations (as well as other socialist safeguards like the welfare system, medicare, social security, etc.) was not to advance socialism but rather to preserve some form of capitalism (a mixture of capitalism and socialism being preferred by those elites to a pure socialism). But the fact remains that they allocate private capital to socialize benefits.

[Umbral]

60. All I'm seeing are excuses, deflections and platitudes...

none of which are reasons to embrace Capitalism. It doesn't matter if it's the robber barons of the 19th century or the corporations of 20th and 21st, the goal isn't to free the markets the goal is to corner the market - any way they can. The aim isn't to work within the rules, but rather to make the rules.

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone." It's as relevant now as it was in Keynes' day, maybe even more so.

[Trillo]

61. It's not "hate" of capitalism, it's more of a hate of deception, at least for me

Money is the root of all evil.

Note I didn't prepend it with "The love of". That is on purpose.

That saying makes me somewhat evil as well, since I'm still taking some minor part in the "monetary system". Getting a sleeping bag, a tent, and a bow and arrow for meat and picking basket for edible berries and nuts, is looking like a better and better form of life. Note to myself: Consider learning how to de-bitter acorns (odd that wasn't taught "in school" in these parts).

The reason money itself is evil: it makes people compete with each other, when humans are essentially social animals (this is anthropological based upon historical evolution in a world of predators much more ferocious than ourselves – we had to help each other to survive that world – we organized into tribes to do so. Our tribe's survival depended upon cooperation, not competition. Our brains are thus hardwired to cooperate with each other). It is essential that businesses compete with each other, and be kept small, otherwise we end up with the deception of monopoly or oligopoly, but making humans compete with each other goes against our nature, which relates to our "pursuit of happiness".

Our modern brand of capitalism, working for our individual self-interest as you have phrased it, has forced all of us, except for a lucky few, to compete with each other for: jobs, housing, healthcare, etc. Those are all "money-based" human-to-human competitions, "money" is the common denominator among all of them. Essentially, our current state of corporatism has used capital to divide us against ourselves through the process known as competition, while corporations' controllers have for decades and even centuries (the latter with a few blips in the opposite direction) worked to rig markets and chip away at needed regulations, essentially making a farce of applying true competition to themselves. Most of the worlds stocks are today "controlled" (very important word if you understand stocks and investor "share" ownership) by a few hands. The large number of small investors is but noise in the system, probably beneficial to keep up the deceptive appearance of broad ownership, when controlling ownership is held by very few folks worldwide.

Most of the time under capitalism, we as individuals lose. Only a few, right now possibly the upper 1%, are paid enough to actually have any notable disposable income, they do because they're the henchmen for the Top 400, whose income when averaged is something like $170,000,000 each year based upon 2001 figures (IIRC). Whether it's the Top 400, or the Top 10 or the Top 1 we all, ultimately, are working for, it is only the top 1% who are currently benefiting from our capitalistic system in a disposable income sense. For everyone else so-called free market systems, that we now know have been rigged, have auctioned up the cost of everything (particularly housing and healthcare) so any disposable income 99% of the rest of us can eek out is relatively speaking only pennies (though obviously the 99% can be further subdivided with those closer to 99% being able to save and invest a few more pennies than the bottom 50%.

How can someone who works on minimum wage possibly pay for food, clothing, and an apartment, as well as have money left over for stock ownership? They can't unless and until they start earning more. Therefore, capitalism and stock ownership doesn't work for minimum wage folks. Even the upper 1% (subtracting the Top 400 from consideration), will not be able to get "controlling ownership" by using stock ownership of public companies, and if by some miracle of miracles they do, they become the exception, not the rule.

Any who are lucky enough to achieve this miracle of miracles, our corporate media promptly trots them out not as an exception to the rule, but with the lie "you can do this too." It is part of keeping the vast majority of us working within a system that doesn't work, in the "hope" it will one day work for us. A long term deception of the MSM has been that education will help us get ahead. The real purpose of K-12 education is to take an animals brain and "program it" away from its natural state of social cooperation and program competition as-way-of-life. This is a difficult task for educators, as it's easy to trigger our instict to kill, it's much harder to get us to compete with each other without killing each other. In any case, this mental programming is unnatural when contrasted with our natural social hard- and soft-wiring, which is quite gentle and cooperative.

Corporate uses this "inner wish" that we still all have buried deep inside despite all the efforts to instil a strong individual ethic of dog-eat-dog competition, to take advantage of us. This is one reason lots of folks don't like to receive others help. They've learned that most of the time when someone is giving them something, it has undesired later consequences, undisclosed fine print, etc.

The entire capitalistic system is a throwback to feudalism, (where capitalism's first seeds started by the way), without appearing to be feudalism. This keeps most folks from figuring out the problem isn't them, or their education, or something else to make "their lack" their own failure, instead of a failure of the greater system around them. Capitalism keeps most of us in misery our entire lives, it is a faith-based system that runs on the fantasy of "hope", a fantasy the "controllers" have promoted, but which actually keeps most of us toiling away for nothing substantial beyond minimal monetary amounts that tries to grant mere existence to most.

Ultimately, the common denominator of this system of lack and denial of rewards to the majority is money, not the love of it. Corporations have become the sole surviving super tribe, their insatiable thirst is for money, and we mere humans are their prey.

Money is the source of evil.

[Trillo]

62. If anyone makes it this far,

wikipedia has two links worth exploring:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

I honestly don't know much about Marx,
I'm not one of the more eggheaded folks around these parts, and schools I experienced never gave him but passing mention, but I do rail against education from time to time. OMG, Marx also allegedly addresses that:

He argues that a core requirement of a capitalist society is that a large portion of the population must not possess sources of self-sustenance that would allow them to be independent, and must instead be compelled, in order to survive, to sell their labor for a living wage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

I'm a little old, and lack much of the needed desire at this point, to start a self-learning effort on Marx.

According to some<51>, the transition to the information society involves abandoning some parts of capitalism, as the "capital" required to produce and process information becomes available to the masses and difficult to control, and is closely related to the controversial issues of intellectual property. Some<51> even speculate that the development of mature nanotechnology, particularly of universal assemblers, may make capitalism obsolete, with capital ceasing to be an important factor in the economic life of humanity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalism

DAre we hope? Oh crap, there goes that inner cooperation once again.

I have no idea how that could come about under our current capitalist system, unless nearly everyone were roughly equal shareholders. One person, one vote, instead of the current systems of one share one vote.

It's something for those still in school to think about.

[Nikki Stone1]

63. The hate of capitalism is due to ABUSES.

When a system's abuses far outweigh the good it does for most people, it will gain their hatred.

No brainer, really.

[AsahinaKimi]

64. Would this be a good place to plug Michael Moore's Movie?

October 2nd around the country!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbuYKogMlwU

*I can not wait to watch this!

[Xenotime]

110. I hope this shakes the foundation of the system.

[question everything]

65. That so many Ued this thread should show you the level of ignorance

Maybe, if the clip from Bill Maher will be available we can all listen to how eloquently Spitzer talked about Capitalism. Not that it will change their mind. Ignorance cannot be cured and too often it is accompanied by arrogance.

[Meldread]

66. I don't think I've ever had a thread Unrecced into oblivion before. :P

I wish it showed just how far below zero it was...

I didn't really expect an overly positive reception to my thread, so I'm not surprised. I was hoping that at least some people were interested in an open and honest debate and discussion on ideas. I was actually expecting some who disagreed to articulate how they viewed things differently, but unfortunately I gave some of the folks here too much credit.

Part of what I see as being a member of the left is an openness to different and new ideas - even radical ones. I'm not an ideologue. If a hardcore communist showed up and completely and beautifully articulated their point of view in such a way that it left me doubting my own (because they simply blew it apart using logic and reason), then I'm open to alternative ways of approaching things. I don't think that such a thing can be done, but I'm always open to debate and discussion. I think it's healthy, and believe that even when people walk away in disagreement they can still share a mutual respect. Even if they are forced deeper into their philosophy, if that philosophy is rooted in logic and reason instead of simple emotion, then it should be made stronger through being challenged.

Unlike some, I enjoy alternative points of view and learn a lot from listening to others. They can sometimes see things that I didn't notice or take into account.

In many ways I find all this very sad. It's almost as if they came from a parallel universe where Glen Beck was a flaming liberal. As cultish followers, they foam at the mouth when a differing opinion is offered, resulting to character assassination and well-honed talking points. (I actually laughed at some of them, 'You're not really gay!' and 'You're not really a liberal!' were my favorite.)

In the end, you can't have a discussion with someone who is more interested in vilifying you or the other point of view. They have no interest in an honest discussion or debate, only shutting it down because they feel their own position threatened.

It makes me sad that such people exist on the left, which is stereotypically portrayed as open to new ideas - unlike the right who are hardcore ideologues. I guess it just goes to show there are two sides to every coin, but ultimately they are the same coin.

[girl gone mad]

81. I think that starting off under the premise that those who disagree with you are "ignorant"..

is not conducive to open and honest debate and discussion.

You might want to reread your OP and then think about the myriad ways in which it contradicts the goals and opinions you stated in this post.

For instance:

"You can't have a discussion with someone who is more interested in vilifying you or the other point of view."

BINGO, my friend!

[ldf]

85. you, obviously, aren't on the "hurting" side of capitalism

one thing i have noticed is the way those who are benefitting from this corrupt system, no matter how "liberal", "rebellious" or "progressive" they may have once been, contort themselves into grotesqueness trying to justify, now that they have GOT theirs, support of keeping it, and paying back as little as possible in taxes, and refusing to express even the slightest hint of a noblesse oblige philosophy. (not that the rest of us should all hang around for crumbs from their table, but willingly assisting would sure beat many of the other kinds of "redistribution of wealth" that may result, otherwise....)

and you may very well be gay, but i would venture you are more of a log cabin republican variety, than a human rights campaign type. some gays (certianly not all) live in such isolation (within tolerant communities) and have such incomes that they aren't feeling the hate, or the financial desperation, other gays are feeling.

but i digress.

those with money obviously don't face the same challenges the rest of us face.

someone who started out poor and made their own fortune usually still have some semblance of understanding of those left behind.

most who are born rich, and do nothing but collect dividends, payments out of a trust fund or inheritance (thanks to unbridled capitalism practiced by their ancestors), tend to not understand because they have never been there. and understanding is the last thing they want to "achieve". of course they can't relate, and they have no desire to.

unfortunately the current version of capitalism is all about protecting those who already have it all, and giving them even more, in money, possesions and power.

having a desire to do well, and live well, is probably what we all are hoping for. but greed is extremely ugly. and that is what the current system is all about.

remember the movie phrase going around a decade or two ago, about "greed is good". those three words pretty much sums up the american brand of capitalism.

bottom line, this "consumer" ain't buyin' what you are sellin'.

you know, lipstick, pig, and all that.

edit for grammar

[Meldread]

139. Funny thing about stereotypes...

...they are typically wrong.

1. I'm not benefiting from "a corrupt system." I'm currently unemployed. I'm also not wealthy.

2. I found it funny that you'd think I was a Log Cabin Republican. I'm not a masochist. I'm not a Human Rights Campaign type either, mostly because I don't feel they really advocate our rights. They're more interested in rubbing elbows with politicians, and are always the first to come back with excuses as to why such-and-such has to wait.

3. I certainly don't live in a tolerant community, either. In fact I live in the rural south, with the majority that openly express their political views being the religious right, who also more-or-less control the local newspaper. I can count the number of liberals / progressives I know locally on one hand, and I include myself in that count.

Try again.

[mdmc]

129. Those that have the advantage are always comfortable with their system

If ya have ways and means of making it in 2009 AMerica, then rock on.
Many people do not.
I have a rush-bot friend that works for his grand-dads oil company. He has it made.
None of his friends have it made. They all hurt under the same system that he enjoys.
So he got new friends.
And they sure do enjoy themselves.

I dislike capitalism because it is less humane then socialism.
Yet I am a left leaning capitalist.
I follow ACTS 4:35-36. I think this is a capitalist statement.

So my opposition is in no way ignorant. My opposition is based in empathy.

Capitalisms is the best economic system, but practiced with empathy.
Fascism is the best system when empathy is no longer desired.

[Odin2005]

91. It's the doctrinaire Trotskyite brigade.

The people that think WSWS is a legitimate news source.

[girl gone mad]

92. If all you have to offer is ad hominem attacks..

why bother?

I can't imaging that running around calling others "Trotskyites" is any more rewarding or useful than carrying around an "Obama is a Socialist!" sign.

[nadinbrzezinski]

146. It's not?

:sarcasm:

I go there when I need story ideas... but I do the same with Coast to Coast.

[Hannah Bell]

109. of which your post is exhibit a.

[nadinbrzezinski]

67. I don't hate capitalism. In fact, it would be a good system if we had it

we don't

Read Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations. Of particular note should be his stance on Monopolies.

This country is just as Capitalist as the USSR was communist.

So I cannot hate what we don't have, now can I?

Oh and I do not need a sarcasm tag... most folks who speak of Capitalism as it stands right now do not realize this little fact. So when we actually have a capitalist system... that WILL BE a good thing. Wake me up when that happens.

Now if you want to argue why our current system has serious flaws, even using The Wealth of Nations, I am all ears.

[Meldread]

71. You won't find much disagreement from me on that point.

I agree with you in the sense that the United States is not a true capitalist nation.

However, almost all the vitriol is aimed at "capitalism", and it seems to have been turned into a giant bogeyman on the left the same way socialism was turned into a big giant bogeyman on the right.

Hence why I called it ignorance. Granted, I'm not the most knowledgeable individual when it comes to economics, but I have the ability to look at things logically and rationally.

[nadinbrzezinski]

83. Well that is the power of propaganda

personally neither system works as written since platonic ideals do not.

We, as a nation, should consider, strongly... enforcing the Sherman Anti Trust, which is very capitalist actually, and going back to the mixed economy of the 1950s. Oh and in that kind of economy, with the regulation in place and levels of taxation, we'd be able to fund our social programs and main street.

What we have today is mostly corporatism.

Oh and don't worry, the US does not have a left either. What passes for a left in the US is full of sound and fury, but it is a left that ideologically is truly maybe left of center in a world scale. And just like the right cannot really define any version of socialism, let alone communism, our left cannot really define capitalism.

So the first thing is to realize that what we live under is much closer to a model designed by Benito Mussolini than Adam Smith.

And depending on how the court, that is the USSC, rules in a case they just heard whether we can make it official.

[Yavin4]

68. You Stated A Falsehood re "Competition"

I would argue that capitalism – real capitalism – is anti-corporation. Not in the sense that large businesses should not exist, but in the sense that a capitalist believes that the system is most effective when there is major competition.

Capitalism does not care about "competition", for competition is not necessary for a capitalist economic system to exist. Capitalism is an economic system wherein the means of production are in the hands of private individuals. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism). It says nothing about competition.

If private interests collude to form oligopolies or monopolies, then it would still be a capitalist system if those entities were in private hands.

Government regulation creates competition, not capitalism.

[Meldread]

73. While technically true...

...almost every philosophy of capitalism that I know has as part of it a belief that competition should exist. Of course, there is a great deal of disagreement over how that is to be accomplished.

Obviously, as should be clear from my OP, I believe in governmental reforms that promote and encourage competition, and generally stand against government policies that favor a particular business or group of businesses. I would be hard pressed to consider anyone a capitalist who believes that monopolies are a good thing in capitalism. That philosophical belief would ultimately lead them (in my view) down an entirely different path... a path that I do see the United States traveling down at the moment.

A mistake I see being made, and the reason I created this thread, is because I see many individuals trying to paint capitalism as the source of all evil. In my mind that is no different than someone on the right declaring socialism as the source of all evil. They're economic philosophies. They can't be good or evil. Such morality comes from people, not ideas or systems, and if the system is deemed evil it is because the government (elected or not) endorses it - either by doing nothing or crafting policies that favor that system.

Thus, from my point of view, people should be angry at our elected leaders not a philosophy – whether they agree or disagree with it is irrelevant.

[Yavin4]

87. You Keep Making The Same Mistake re Capitalism and Competition

Competition IS NOT necessary for capitalism. I linked you a definition of capitalism, and it says NOTHING about competition. NOTHING.

See, you're making the mistake that several people also make in that they falsely believe that the regulatory and political changes applied to capitalism throughout the 20th century, e.g. anti-trust laws, are endemic to capitalism. The whole reason for anti trust laws was because capital began to congeal among a few people. A true capitalist would have a indifferent view of privately held monopolies or oligopolies.

Not understanding this very crucial point destroys your entire thesis. From a purely moral standpoint, socialism is superior to capitalism as an economic theory, for it does give people a greater say over their economic destiny. The downside to socialism is that it may provide dis-incentives for innovation and technological advancement.

[KoKo]

70. Of course..."Capitalism" is Great..until it "overeaches" and becomes Oligarchy...

or worse. It's always great...until it fails through "ABUSE." Just like any other Philosophical
"Think Tank" drivel based on mathematical models and theories from Guru's who lived in another era who want to prescribe prescriptions for those living beyond them. It works in the Universities and filters out.

But, is it ever PRACTICAL? NO! In the long run it's proved wrong and a new "Theory" surfaces and the University Guru's latch on and push it out there to the next generation.

In the end...it's all Boom, Bust, Boom, Bust...and in the boom they make millions/gadzillions and in the BUST they write books and make millions/gadzillions abouthow it all FELL APART.

It's Capitalism from the THINK TANKERS imposed on the serfs below.

[Joanne98]

74. The game is rigged.

[thread-bear]

76. A mixture of capitalism and socialism works best.

A system that uses capitalism as the engine and socialism as a brake works best. Socialism is needed to provide for the basic needs of all the population(for example, health care) and to regulate and curb pure capitalism.(Greed and corruption) The Soviets debated between a system of socialism and a capitalist/socialist government and chose the socialist option. Pure socialism will always lead to tyrannical governments,just as pure capitalism will always lead to a nation of slaves. What we have today is not capitalism,but corporatism. Socialized capitalism.

[Kievan Rus]

77. I hate hypercapitalism...not capitalism per se

[anonymous171]

78. I don't hate Capitalism. I hate the Capitalists (owners of Capital) who want us to subsidize them

via tax cuts and other forms of corporate welfare.

[cherokeeprogressive]

80. I believe it's the notion that NO ONE should ever be required to lift a finger

in order to be provided with what's necessary to satisfy Maslow's pyramid.

[anonymous171]

88. I just think no one should get to profit from that labor

Really, work is good. State Communists and their ilk are just lazy asses who want everything to be provided for them.

[Common Sense Party]

84. Capitalism is the WORST economic system

except for all the others.

[girl gone mad]

93. I can't let you get away with that..

after we've just seen the spectacular global meltdown caused by capitalism gone wild. Like it or not, financial derivatives were the ultimate expression of free market capitalism.

Europe's social democratic countries seem to now be recovering at a more rapid clip than uber-capitalist China and America are.

[johnaries]

94. "uber-capitalist China"?

:rofl:

[girl gone mad]

95. Are you arguing that China is not a capitalist country?

I've lived in China. You can't walk down the street in most places without people trying to sell you something. It's the most capitalist place I've ever been in my life.

[johnaries]

130. Do you mean Taiwan, or Communist China?

Actually, China is proof that Socialism alone does not work on a large scale. It is still considered a Communist State, but it has adapted and embraced Capitalistic Reforms. Which is why it is currently so successful (along with it's huge population).

So, let's look at the history of Socialist States. The USSR went bankrupt. Cuba is poverty-stricken. North Korea is poverty-stricken and could not survive without help from China. China and North Vietnam are thriving because they have shifted to Capitalistic practices.

Communism/Socialism work well in a small, local system. But fails miserably on a National level.

[girl gone mad]

143. So now you agree that China is a capitalist country?

Gee, make up your mind.

China is an authoritarian capitalist country. They are not communist, nor are they a republic, despite the widespread use of these labels.

China's forays into capitalism only prove that democracy is not necessary for capitalism to thrive. In fact, capitalism seems to have spread more rapidly under an authoritarian regime than it ever did in Western democracies.

China is hardly thriving. Anywhere from 30 to 50 million Chinese workers are currently unemployed. The government has been pumping massive amounts of money into the economy, but that hasn't stopped many industrial centers from quickly becoming ghost towns. I won't get into the uncontrollable environmental disasters they've got on their hands. China is facing some serious, serious problems, many of them a direct result of their reckless embrace of hyper-capitalism.

If you want to know what's really going on in China, Michael Pettis' blog is the most accurate source of information that I've been able to find - http://mpettis.com/

As I mentioned in another post, France and Germany both appear to be cleaning our clock right now and these operate as more socialist economies.

[Common Sense Party]

120. What proof do you have that Europe's countries are recovering

faster than the U.S. and China? Their unemployment is as high as ours. Their GDPs are dropping like rocks.

[girl gone mad]

122. Proof:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/08/europe-recovers-as-us-lags.html">"Europe Recovers as U.S. Lags"

It was conventional wisdom in the US and UK financial press that Europe was dong a hopelessly bad job of responding to the economic downturn, that it needed to do vastly more in the way of fiscal stimulus, that it was consigning its citizens to continued recession, and the Germans in particular were to blame for their conservatism re emergency fiscal measures. German readers begged to differ, pointing out the Germany (and the rest of Europe) has large automatic stabilizers (very generous unemployment insurance, for instance), making discretionary fiscal spending less necessary.

I was traveling along the Danube and Rhine in June, and saw far fewer signs of distress (like vacant retail stores) then I see in TARP-supported Manhattan. I thought this was merely sample bias, the vagaries of being in tourist areas (albeit before tourist season was in full swing) and discounted my impressions.

Turns out my sample may not have been so unrepresentative. The Wall Street Journal reports that Europe appears on the cusp of a bona fide recovery, with France and Germany both showing decent second quarter growth, while the US is trying to pretend that “things are getting worse less quickly” is tantamount to recovery.

Now are any of the Euro bashers about to give the EU authorities some credit? I doubt it.

And this disparity, if it persists, points to a much deeper issue. The US chose to deregulate across a wide range of activities and let the devil take the hindmost. Europe cares more about institutional frameworks and collective outcomes. US commentators regularly describe Europe a sclerotic. But if the EU winds up delivering better growth, what justification do we have for a system that seems best at redistributing income to the top 1%?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/13/germany-france-unexpected_n_258840.html">Germany, France Unexpectedly Return To Growth, Signaling End Of Europe's Recession

The euro-region economy barely contracted in the second quarter as Germany and France unexpectedly returned to growth, suggesting Europe's worst recession since World War II is coming to an end.

Gross domestic product fell 0.1 percent from the first quarter, when it plunged 2.5 percent, the most since the euro- area data were first compiled in 1995, the European Union's statistics office in Luxembourg said today. Economists had estimated GDP declined 0.5 percent in the three months through June, the median of 32 forecasts in a Bloomberg survey showed.

“There is a more-than-decent chance that euro-zone economic activity has now hit a bottom and will expand again in the third quarter, as many other economies follow Germany and France out of recession,” said Martin van Vliet, senior economist at ING Bank in Amsterdam. “However, we fear that the recovery will be relatively slow and protracted.”

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2009/08/surprising_europe_continues_to.cfm">Surprising Europe continues to show recovery

IT'S really something to see what people are saying in Europe, about the European economy. "The recession is over", "The recovery has started", "The third quarter will be very good". No hedging, no qualifications, just acknowledgements that the euro zone, which suffered an extremely deep decline in the first quarter of the year and seemed to be badly lagging the American economy in the second quarter, is now clearly signalling recovery.

Last week, we learned that euro area economy is probably expanding once more, led by France and Germany. Evidence supporting this continues to roll in. Germany's service sector seems to have expanded in August, as did France's manufacturing sector. Optimism in the two large economies continues to increase.

[Common Sense Party]

132. That's great. And Spain is in a depression, and the EU bloc is going

to shrink by 4% this year.

[girl gone mad]

142. EU as a whole is doing better than us..

with the Social Democrat economies of France and Germany leading the charge. Spain has its own set of problems related to currency restraints. Spain's depression is not organic, it's a product of poor central bank policy (joining the Union prematurely) so I would argue that it's more than a little bit disingenuous to cite them as an example of widespread European economic weakness.

For the moment, we continue to slide, while Europe is starting to look rather healthy.

[BillDU]

89. Are you calling the Bible Ignorant?

Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil.
You don't know the devil?
But isn't it clear?

[anonymous171]

99. Thus the rise of the atheist capitalist.

You cannot serve two masters after all.

[Odin2005]

90. IMO the problem is that people assume that "Free Enterprise" is the same thing as "Capitalism"

It's not, it's a false association popularized by Frederich Hayek and other Right-Libertarians. If businesses were more like co-ops, more controlled by their employees, you would still have vibrant free enterprise, just without the parasite in the middle.

Oh, and the people un-recommending this thread suck.

[eridani]

96. What capitalists really believe

They believe that they are entitled to own other peoples' means of production, and to monetary gain without being themselves involved in production. I don't believe that myself, and state ownership of the means of production is just plain NOT the only alternative. What about nobody being allowed to own anyone else's means of production? That would mean that all enterprises would be either individually or collectively owned.

This issue has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue of market goods vs. public goods. I think that health care, fire protection, roads, schools etc should be public goods. Consumer electronics, cars, restaurants, etc, should be market goods. Public goods provide the necessary infrastructure for the existence of market goods. In what sense is it necessary that producers of market goods have people other than the producers own the means of production?

[omega minimo]

98. http://www.thomhartmann.com

Not even gonna read your ignorant/arrogant OPBS. Wake the fuck up.

[bhikkhu]

101. Your analysis is based on ignorance

3 sentences in, and you twist both capitalism and socialism into modern hate-radio definitions. I wouldn't go much farther than to suggest reading Tuchman's "The Proud Tower". The first few chapters deal with the conditions of 130 years ago or so, where the philosophies of both find their roots in the maturing of the industrial age.

[earth mom]

104. Capitalism in this country is nothing but exploitative unchecked greed. It's evil and

it's just about destroyed the middle class in this country.

That said, there is nothing wrong with COMMERCE.

But the difference between Capitalism and Commerce in the U.S. is light years apart.

[opihimoimoi]

106. PLUS 1.....:o)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

111. Not ignorance, clear-headedness about the monster capitalism has become

I'm self-employed, and I appreciate the opportunity to do that, but I'm feeling extreme downward pressure on prices--below what I was getting ten years ago-- due to competition from India and China (no, really) and a huge translation agency that's to be buying up every other translation agency in the world (or at least it seems that way) and telling translators "Take our crappy insulting rate--half of what used to be the going rate-- or leave it."

And I'm actually lucky to have work, unlike some people.

[GTurck]

112. Capitalism is....

at its core amoral. Being amoral it will only provide benefits outside of itself when forced by law and regulation. Owning a home is not part of capitalism. Capitalism is always and only about making money not about the ownership of things humans need to survive and thrive. There is a long history of capitalism and corporatism in the English speaking world (almost 1,000 years) and mostly it has been bad morally, economically, spiritually, and politically.
However when capitalism is regulated, as it was from the 1930's to the 1980's it can often provide economic security to a great many people. It will not however ever be sustainable.

[JackRiddler]

115. Your opening definitions are already questionable...

the rest of the argument fails, for the most part. Also, you should be careful about attributing hidden motives to those with whom you disagree ("hate").

Your essay's basic fallacy is to proceed from overly formal, ahistorical first principles, which you define as follows:

"Capitalism is an economic system that focuses on private ownership, and it is often contrasted against socialism which is an economic system that focuses on state ownership."

No. Under capitalism the owners of capital (which may include the state) determine how it is invested and to what end, and always do so with capital growth via profit in mind. Etymologically, there is no questioning what the word means: the rule of capital. Owners of the mode of production compete and the ones who accumulate more capital over time tend to win out, gain more power and push out the ones who accumulate less capital.

There is no one way of defining socialism, but most of those who believe in it would never define it the way you have. They are far likelier to say that under socialism the mode of production is owned commonly so that it may be deployed to advance the welfare and will of the people (defined variously as "the greatest number," the producers, the working classes, or all the people insofar as they have a right to see a minimum set of needs and wants met).

Depending on definition, socialism may cover modes like worker-owned cooperatives with no state involvement, while state enterprises can be and often have been capitalist.

You are right, of course, to note that real systems tend to be mixed, albeit with capitalist logic inexorably applying to all things. This is a strength of your piece, insofar as you're looking at the world, rather than contrasting abstractions.

All definitions fail if you don't ground them historically. How did capitalism or socialism arise? What did the terms originally mean, both in intent and reality, and how did the systems so labeled originally work? How did each develop and what do they look like today?

From the simplistic and I would argue faulty initial premise, you develop strawmen with obvious moral overtones:

"A capitalist believes individuals are best suited to make choices regarding their own wealth. It generally assumes that people will act in their own interests most of the time. A socialist believes that the government is best suited to make the choice regarding an individuals wealth. It generally assumes that the government can better allocate the resources to benefit society as a whole."

For greater clarity, I'd recommend reading a lot of history books covering the last couple of centuries starting with the French Revolution and the industrial revolution.

I would argue that capitalism – real capitalism – is anti-corporation.

Go ahead. The corporations disagree. Perhaps we should be debating how a just and rational system would look, rather than what label it should carry?

Sometimes I see fellow lefties saying the government should take over this or that area of our government. Yet, I cannot help but feel disbelief at statements like that especially after eight years of George W. Bush. There will come a day again in the future where the Republican's control the Presidency or both houses of Congress. Do you want a Republican overseeing some aspect of your life? I don't.

The "Republican" who owns an energy monopoly or maintains hegemony over the local food or energy market may have more control over my life than a "Republican" at the helm of a government agency. Once again, too simplistic and doctrinaire.

Thanks for taking the time to present this essay.

[Swamp Rat]

159. Excellent

:thumbsup:

[mdmc]

121. ACTS 4:34-35

There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale, and put them at the feet of the apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need. (ACTS 4:34-35)

[mdmc]

124. point by point - no ignorance --

I do not understand some of the hatred of capitalism expressed by some folk here on this forum, but also elsewhere by other fellow lefties. I can only assume that the hatred is grounded in ignorance. ?

Capitalism is an economic system that focuses on private ownership, and it is often contrasted against socialism which is an economic system that focuses on state ownership. I PREFER SOCIAL OWNERSHIP AND BENEFIT

A capitalist believes individuals are best suited to make choices regarding their own wealth. It generally assumes that people will act in their own interests most of the time. A socialist believes that the government is best suited to make the choice regarding an individuals wealth. It generally assumes that the government can better allocate the resources to benefit society as a whole.
I AGREE WITH THE LATER
The United States, contrary to popular belief, is not a purely capitalist nation. It is somewhat a mixture between the two, and in fact where I see the anger most passionate among others on the left is directed at some of the socialist aspects of the nations economic policy. (In particular at corporations.)
OKAY
For example, bailouts for business goes directly against capitalistic philosophy. The government giving wealth to a business – whether through subsidy (such as farmers in Iowa) or bailout (AIG and huge failing banks) – is socialist. A capitalist would let them die because they've proven they cannot exist on their own.
CONFUSING SOCIALISM WITH FASCISM
However, that does not mean a capitalist cannot see the consequences of a business failure on society. To use the bailouts as an example, a capitalist would have put AIG and those big banks through some type of structured bankruptcy. Those businesses that were failing deserved to die.
YES THEY DID. AND THOSE THAT ALLOWED IT TO HAPPEN DESERVE JAIL
While there is always a concern when the government interferes with the economy, unless someone is a laissez-faire capitalist there is no philosophical objection to regulation provided it is good regulation.

I would argue that capitalism – real capitalism – is anti-corporation. Not in the sense that large businesses should not exist, but in the sense that a capitalist believes that the system is most effective when there is major competition. This goes against the interest of any business which wants to dominate its current market. Thus, a real capitalist supports regulation that ensures that everyone is playing on a level field, and ensures that new businesses can easily enter the marketplace. That is good for capitalism.
SO WE HAVE FASCISM INSTEAD OF WHAT YOU TERM "REAL CAPITALISM"
A capitalist also does not have any major philosophical disagreement over consumer protection, so long as it is not being used as an excuse to shut out legitimate businesses. (Again with the exception of the laissez-faire capitalist who are a whole other pot of beans.)

I suppose the most major difference that I have with some other folks on the left is that I don't hate business. The job of a business is to make money. No more and no less. When it comes to the failings that are often blamed on business it is almost always as a result of the government. For example, a business might get around paying benefits to certain employees by calling them freelance contractors despite the fact that they are regular employees.
I WOULD PREFER A LARGER CORPORATE ROLE WITHIN SOCIETY -- THEY MUST BE MORAL
Someone might look at the business and call them unethical for doing such a thing (and they are), but the job of a business is to make money. By doing this they are saving the money they make and diverting it elsewhere that will hopefully provide them with additional money. The fault of this practice should not be laid at the feet of the business, but rather the government for creating a system in which that type of action can take place.
THERE SHOULD BE LAWS TO REGULATE HOW $ IS MADE - THE gOVT. IS OWNED BY THE CORPORATIONS
The government creates the rules by which everyone must play. When those rules are inadequate or created from corruption within the government then you get a system like our healthcare industry. THOSE WITH THE GOLD CREATE THE RULES THE RULES ALWAYS FAVOR THE CORPORATIONS OVER THE WORKERS.

Sometimes I see fellow lefties saying the government should take over this or that area of our government. Yet, I cannot help but feel disbelief at statements like that especially after eight years of George W. Bush. There will come a day again in the future where the Republican's control the Presidency or both houses of Congress. Do you want a Republican overseeing some aspect of your life? I don't.
THE NEO-CONS OWN OUR PRIVATE INDUSTRIES NOW. THE SAME PEOPLE THAT PUT BUSH IN POWER OWN THE PRIVATE SECTOR


And for the record this post has very little to do with the healthcare debate. Since I am fairly certain that some people who disagree may attack me on that issue let me make my position clear: I support something similar to the French model. Contrary to popular perception in America the French have a model that is based off private insurance companies, the major difference being that they are all non-profit. It is not government owned such as in Britain or Canada.
OKAY


One of the major sources of the problem in our healthcare system, outside of government corruption and stupidity, is the fact that health insurance companies are beholden to shareholders rather than policy holders. The two groups are in direct conflict. Competition in the healthcare market keeps prices low, encourages innovation, and ensures better quality healthcare overall. This is why the French model is superior to all others that I've looked into. Of course, I think we could improve upon it a great deal if we'd examine it with a critical eye.
UH, PROFITS BEFORE TREATMENT. THAT IS THE PRIVATE HC PROBLEM

[saltpoint]

123. Capitalism doesn't work very well for people who don't have much money.

That's one point worth considering.

More money often tends to buy better health treatment.

More money often tends to buy better justice.

The more stuff you accumulate the bigger the carbon footprint.

And it makes people behave like shitheads. Witness the heartless stepmother and spineless father in Hansel and Gretel, who arrange to dump the kids in the woods because there isn't enough money to feed them.

[The Clipped Eagle]

131. I have no problem with Capitalism on it's own....

But, I do have a problem with this unfettered, unregulated form that I've been seeing, and I refer to as "cowboy capitalism".

There needs to be a delicate balance. There can't be too much regulation, or too little. My home of NY State has been hurting for years, because there's too much government, and too much taxation, which leads to businesses leaving. Conversely, if there's no government, some companies grow out of control, and you get monopolies, which I also think are bad for an economy.

[Libertas1776]

136. I have no problem with

small time capitalism...family owned businesses, mom and pop stores, bakeries, tailors, restaurants etc. And even large company's, but one's that are well, if not strictly, regulated to allow for free and fair competition that prevents corporate abuse and monopolies. It's big time, manipulative, abusive, unfettered, unregulated oligarchic capitalism that destroys small businesses and crushes free enterprise that I hate. There are places that the government, not the free market and capitalism belong, such as health care. That is a social service like the fire dept or police, not something to make a profit off of. I believe in a healthy mix between regulated capitalism and socialism, much like you would find in some Scandinavian country etc. That's what I want. What we have now in this country is the extreme of capitalism...hell, not even capitalism, more like oligarchy.

[Quantess]

137. Too late to Unrecommend.

[Romulox]

141. Give the OP the untintentional irony award!

"The United States, contrary to popular belief, is not a purely capitalist nation. It is somewhat a mixture between the two, and in fact where I see the anger most passionate among others on the left is directed at some of the socialist aspects of the nations economic policy. (In particular at corporations.)

For example, bailouts for business goes directly against capitalistic philosophy."

This is one of the most ignorant things I believe I've ever read. To have it said in the context of a scold OP with the above title turns the whole thing into comedy, however! :silly:

[madville]

144. Some form of Capitalism has to exist

A majority of Americans are employed by small businesses. If we destroy the desire to own ones own business because of over regulation or high taxes, where do all those jobs go?

[voc]

145. I have to give it you

Your Op is written well. It takes true talent to twist an ideology and make it sound almost plausible.

Unfortunately your blame of the government falls short as does "the system" commentary above, because both are
run by people. And as interesting as it may be to depersonalize them, both have the components that make them uniquely
human, avarice and corruption.

There are some excellent responses to your essay, yet you decry them as so much emotional nonsense as well as the ignorant comment in the op. This is an excellent essay for those on the right who lack the eloquence to convince like minded folk as well as those on the fence to join their way of thinking.

You probably are on the left side of the aisle, but as thought provoking as this essay is, I would like to see what passes as an admitted consevative member, there are some here, comment on your essay.

[SoCalDem]

150. Not EVERYTHING needs to be "privately owned & operated"

I have no problem with people starting a business to make stuff..but there are things that are necessary for all of us, and should not be in the hands of "capitalists"

energy
communications
health care
education
water

[Meldread]

153. ------------

On some of the things you listed, I could somewhat agree on. There are some things that only the government can do: building the interstate highways, as an example. A space program is another thing that only the government could accomplish, though that may change in the future.

However, why did you rule out Public Private Partnerships? Let me give you some examples.

Under energy, it makes sense for the government to own the electrical lines that supply the electricity to your home. Otherwise, in order for new companies to break into the same market, they'd have to build their own means of supplying your house with electricity. This could potentially lead to innovation, perhaps even someday leading to the elimination of electrical lines altogether, but in the mean time this would create a monopoly and innovation is never guaranteed. Thus, the government controls the electrical lines leading to your home, and you privately own any wiring in your own home. This is to prevent a monopoly from forming.

The above system would be the public part of the partnership. The next half would be the private part. Just because the government controls the means of delivering the energy, does not mean the government needs to control the methods of producing it. In fact I would argue that this is actually not in the governments best interest, because the government may inevitably be required to pay more for the energy if it produces it on its own. Which in turn means you'd pay more for it.

My reasoning is as follows: The government is almost always inefficient and most of the time is also ineffective. Unlike a business, which can be shut down, the government once established can theoretically continue onward into perpetuity unless it is overthrown. Instead of having politicians sell themselves like cheap prostitutes to the highest bidder, they'd be controlled by bureaucratic politics. Case in point: Look at our current situation in Afghanistan. Internal politics facilitated the release of the General's report, which in turn they are trying to use to force President Obama to give them more troops. When people want something, they find a way to make it happen, public or private.

However, all of this is a bit off track from where I was going above. Even though the government controls the means of delivering the energy to the consumer, it does not need to control the methods of producing it. Instead the government creates a marketplace and outlines how it will purchase energy to deliver to its citizens. It also outlines all necessary consumer protections (such as regulations on emissions and harmful chemicals).

In an ideal marketplace, which the government should attempt to foster, they purchase electricity by the kilowatt, and have multiple energy production companies to turn too. The method of selecting who to buy from would vary depending on the interests of the energy companies consumers; which would be the citizenry, represented by the government. This means that if the citizens want more green technology and are willing to pay slightly more, that in turn begins to favor solar, wind and other clean renewable energy sources. That then encourages investment into that sector of energy production, while in turn causing some of the smaller coal (or other less favored, non-renewable, and polluting) companies to either consolidate with the larger ones or go out of business.

It would also encourage rapid innovation within the unfavored industries and the supposed "clean coal" technology would make it into operation much more quickly, as the companies feel they are in a life-or-death struggle to stay alive.

If the government were to control those coal companies, they'd trot out the same excuses that the companies currently give, however we likely would not even see coal as "clean" as it is today as a result of regulatory health standards. We also would not have made as much progress toward renewable energy resources. Like any monopolist the government would not want to give up their energy production rights, even if it is in its own best interest to do so. The reason being institutionalized favoritism and bureaucracy. An example of institutionalized favoritism and bureaucracy, although not an exact parallel to this situation, is the multiple intelligence agencies in existence.

We have the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and a number of other groups large and small, each of them starting out with different missions, but overtime having their missions expanded to the point now where there is a great deal of overlap. This leads to inefficiency, a lack of information sharing, one agent from the FBI and another from the CIA can be after the same guy without knowing it, or have two separate parts of a puzzle and not share it.

Anyone who would look at all these organizations whole and objectively, should have the urge to merge some of them, radically alter the mission of others, and sharpen the focus of the missions of some of the lesser organizations – all at the same time doing their best to trim the fat, and crush bureaucracy in the name of efficiency. This would not only make us safer, it would also allow them to accomplish more for less money. This is exactly what was suggested by the 9/11 Commission's Report.

So why did it not happen? Institutionalized favoritism and bureaucratic politics. In the end we're left with an intelligence agency that is sub-par, wasteful, bureaucratic, and being held together by the equivalent of duck tape. It is always easier to simply create a new agency rather than to reform or destroy an old one, and if anyone knows anything about politicians they always follow the path of least resistance. This of course leads us to more of the same problems.

However, the above does not account for the corruption that wealth brings into the equation, and this is where capitalism often gets blamed unfairly in my opinion. In a private system you have private companies whose sole purpose is to earn a profit. The more they earn the better. This gives them the incentive to lobby politicians and donate large sums of money so they can get policies passed that favors their sector or their particular business.

I think this is where most of the forum and I part ways. I think most people would agree with the bulk of what I typed above, right up until this point. I do not blame the businesses for their actions, even though they are unethical from a certain point of view. I blame the politicians who accept the "donations" aka "bribes" and who enjoy the benefits of sucking off the lobby's teat. They are supposed to represent OUR interests. On the other hand, the business is obligated to do all that it can in order to remain competitive. If lobbying and "donating" to politicians didn't pay off they wouldn't do it.

Now, to me, this problem is much easier to solve with the source of corruption coming from the outside rather than if it had been from the inside. It can be solved with a few very harsh zero tolerance laws:

- Restrict private donations to $250 or less per individual, denying anyone who lobbies, owns or manages a business from donating.

- Create a system for publicly funding campaigns.

- Draft a new law that acts as an effective restraining order against business owners, managers, and lobbyists from directly or indirectly contacting an elected official or candidate for office.

- Any lobbyist, business owner, or manager that meets with a government employee that oversees or has the potential to grant them favors must be done in a very specific setting. All conversations must be videotaped and close captioned. An employee who violates this rule is subject to a fine and termination. If there is evidence of a quid-pro-quo the employee will be prosecuted under a zero tolerance policy. The business, or businesses that employed the lobbyist, will be leveled with a 10% tax on all profits for one year, regardless if there is evidence of a quid-pro-quo or not.

- Any lobbyist, business owner, or manager seeks to meet with an elected leader must do so in a public hearing, which must be videotaped and close captioned and made available to the public and media. An elected official or candidate for office who meets with a lobbyist or business owner / manager privately, shall immediately lose all rights to public funding in current or future campaigns. If there is evidence for a quid-pro-quo the candidate, elected official, or lobbyist shall be be prosecuted under a zero tolerance policy. The business, or businesses that employed the lobbyist, will be leveled with a 10% tax on all profits for one year, regardless if there is evidence of a quid-pro-quo or not.

- Any government employee or former elected office holder may not become a lobbyist for ten years. Additionally, they shall count as a business manager with all of the above laws applying to them, unless they are able to find employment elsewhere in the government owned sector.

- Anyone who owned (or still owns), managed (or still manages), held (or still holds) a stake in a business, or lobbied for one in the past ten years cannot run for elected office or become a government employee within the same sector they worked or lobbied for.

- The FBI shall have the right to wiretap elected officials, candidates for elected office, or government employees gain access to their private files and any other records if there is perceived to be an element of criminal activity or corruption. All criminal evidence is handed over to the justice department for prosecution.

In all of the above I am using "business" in a very broad sense. It would include both for-profit and non-profit businesses, organizations, and advocacy groups.

If a zero tolerance policy was adopted, and the proper disincentives put into place then we would not have many of the problems we currently experience. Create a wall between the government and the private sector, not unlike the wall between church and state before the religious right began trying to knock it down. Then the moment corruption or criminal activity is detected, bring down the axe mercilessly on all involved, and let their heads roll. Problem solved.

[JVS]

151. We are familiar with capitalism and capitalists. To hell with them.

[fascisthunter]

154. because too many folks have been screwed by it,

and very little in comparison are rewarded. I'm fine with a very strongly regulated capitalism, but not the form of capitalism we see today.

Capitalism has earned it's hatred... you have to be totally ignorant not to be able to understand how someone could hate it so much.

[JNelson6563]

156. Recommended reading

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast.

Real eye opening stuff that you appear to be in need of reading.

Julie

[saltpoint]

158. Plus, it didn't work for Richard Cory.

[el_bryanto]

162. Good post - not surprised it engendered a lot of anger

Bryant

[Romulox]

166. It is a silly post: "For example, bailouts for business goes directly against capitalistic"

"For example, bailouts for business goes directly against capitalistic philosophy."

And yet they all took the taxpayer money. Easier to brush away this seeming inconsistency with some rhetoric from a grade school civics textbook than to face one's own cognitive dissonance, I guess.

[el_bryanto]

167. Yeah - he was saying they were being hypocritical

He was saying that taking those bailouts was a betrayal of what he sees capitalism is. Why don't you get that?

Bryant

[meow2u3]

164. It's not capitalism per se; it's unbridled crony capitalism that has morphed into oligolopy

that has operated like cancer on a living organism. Industry lobbyists have all but literally written the laws which effectively legalized crime committed by multinational corporations against average Joes and Janes; businesses have made rules encouraging, if not outright mandating, fraud; and politicians, especially those in small states, have been effectively bribed by corporate interests. And that's merely scratching the surface.

[Taverner]

165. I don't hate Capitalism - I just think its not a cure-all

It is one tool an economy has to solve a problem. Socialism is another, and distributism is yet another.

[blindpig]

168. If you hate poverty, inequality and war

then you hate capitalism.

[TheKentuckian]

170. We don't have a free market in this country. You can call it what you like.