Tasine Loc: Southwest US

:thumbup: :thumbup: That would be NOW.

Fred Schnaubelt Loc: San Diego

It's important to understand that all hyphenated forms of Capitalism such as Crony-capitalism are merely extensions of Socialism with Capitalism used in a pejorative manner.

Ludwig von Mises expresses it best in Bureaucracy (short and downloadable from Mises Institute). Capitalism or market economy is that system of social cooperation and division of labor that is bases on private ownership of the means of production. The material factors of production are owned by the individual citizens, the capitalists and the landowners, etc. etc. (page 20). For further elaboration see: Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand.

ldsuttonjr Loc: ShangriLa

Fred: Good luck with the Marxist,Communist playing around on this site


No other economic system but capitalism has lifted billions of people so decisively out of poverty.
Economist Joseph Schumpeter noted this fact in 1942: "Electric lighting is no great boon to anyone who has money enough to buy a sufficient number of candles and to pay servants to attend them. "It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improvements that would mean much to a rich man.

"Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort."
Donald J. Boudreaux Merry Christmas!

oldladyfromwaco

There was a man in Waco, Bernard Rapaport, who passed away this last year. He was tremendously wealthy, could walk into any president's office...and had for decades. He was a philanthropist, and did great things for this town.
He had a article in the paper expressing his view of capitalism, and said that it was typified by creation...of an idea, businesses, employment, etc.-----the building of a country, rather than taking it down piece by piece for the profit of a few.....pure greed.
There is a difference between building, creating and sucking the life out of a country like psychopathic vampires for financial remuneration and self-satisfaction.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

You go, girl! :thumbup: :mrgreen:

rumitoid

What you will read below comes from this link and is, I feel, crucial for both sides and the middle to read. There is also a nice little clip of Reagan telling Soviet jokes. Good reading.
http://www.rationaldevelopment.net/the-flaws-of-capitalism

"I recently read a bril­liant com­ment that sums up the essen­tial flaw of cap­i­tal­ism vs com­mu­nism (I edited out mis­takes and clar­i­fied the meaning):

“The flaw of cap­i­tal­ism is greed & nar­cis­sism (cap­i­tal­ism rewards greed, as long as you are not caught). The fatal flaw of com­mu­nism is exactly the same (greedy peo­ple are still greedy but now they just play under dif­fer­ent rules). For as long as humans fail to address their own inher­ent per­son­al­ity dis­or­ders, any sys­tem will be vul­ner­a­ble to the machi­na­tions of clever / unscrupu­lous folks try­ing to get more for them­selves at the expense of oth­ers. That is why we see the exact same types of inequal­i­ties & ‘elites’ ruin both.”

"It’s true that cap­i­tal­ism is risky and unfair (isn’t life sup­posed to be risky and unfair?), but the prob­lem with try­ing to fix these issues is that when peo­ple try, they more often than not end up mak­ing soci­ety even more inse­cure and unfair. That doesn’t mean that every pub­lic ven­ture is doomed to do more harm than good (for exam­ple roads and defense work great).

"The cur­rent fail­ures of cap­i­tal­ism: monop­o­lies, debt, and grossly uneven dis­tri­b­u­tion of income result from the same peo­ple who take advan­tage of the cur­rent sys­tem as they would under any sys­tem. While no sys­tem is fool­proof, the best is no doubt a philo­soph­i­cal med­ley of left and right ideas (which is what we already have).

"Some believe that cap­i­tal­ism is “doomed to destroy itself” out of prin­ci­ple but look how quickly other sys­tems destroy them­selves (com­mu­nism implodes rather quickly under bad lead­er­ship). As far as social poli­cies go, bet­ter to side with those that pri­or­i­tize free­dom than put faith in the good of bureau­crats (not that they are bad peo­ple, but there’s a rea­son we say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions).


p.s. for your enjoy­ment: ronald regan telling some funny jokes on ideology

ldsuttonjr Loc: ShangriLa

Well oldlady: It finally happened! "As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron."
        ----H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

ldsuttonjr Loc: ShangriLa

Rumitold: Freedom and Control

Is Obama right? Is there something wrong with one person making a lot more than another? Is redistributing wealth from the person who earned it to the person who didn't the "defining challenge of our time?"
If so, can you control the outcome of a free market... and still have a free market?
But who cares? The trouble with free markets is they don't necessarily deliver the results you want. As far as material success is concerned, nothing can beat the free enterprise system (the freer the better). No economist has ever put forward a serious proposal for making it more productive. No improvement has ever been forced upon it. No rival system has ever raced ahead of it.
But the improvers talk about "fairness," "social consequences" and the "political environment" in which an economy operates. They say there's a "trade-off" between the ideal of free markets... and a fair, democratic society.
That's what seems to stick in President Obama's craw: that the trade-off has gotten out of balance. Markets are too free, he believes; they deliver outcomes that voters don't like.
"It's either money or control," says a friend of ours.
"You get money by giving up control... and letting markets work.
"But you, personally, don't necessarily get what you want. And if you try to control an outcome, it's gonna cost you."

A Matter of Envy

Rich people want to control things because they want to protect what they have. Poor people want to control things because they want more of what other people have.
Nobody – save a few philosophers and wing-nut economists – is willing to let the chips fall where they may.
"It's all a matter of envy," continues our friend. "And greed. Everybody wants what he can't get honestly. He turns to the government to get it."
And then he changes his tune... Instead of talking about what he wants, he refers to what he says would be "best for the society"... or what would "help the economy."
What we all want is an economy that delivers our own version of "fairness," which almost always involves more for us and less for everybody else.
It's an economy that is so finely controlled that what we do no longer determines what we get. We can step on all the rakes we want; never will the handle come up and hit us in the face.
Instead, everything is under control. We get outcomes that are the result neither of choice nor chance, but of crony connections and the master plan. In short, we all want to live in North Korea – until we actually see the place.

Chris Hunter

1OldGeezer

idsuttonJr,
Very good discussion..
One fact stands out when you consider the attempt to equalize results between citizens:
BOTTOM LINE: You must relinquish all your financial freedoms that are inherent in a free enterprise system to the government.

The government must be given total control of all wealth so they can, first, decide (bureacratically) how much each of us "deserve", then, they must have the power to take anything from you in order to give it to someone else. (Either literally or figuratively).

The only real question you have to answer is: Do you want to keep your freedom or give it to some bureaucrat? Its not a half way situation except in the beginning.
1oldgeezer

son of witless

You are actually partially right. Human beings are the problem. Under any system you will have cheating and corruption. Our wise Founders recognized that when they put in the checks and balances in the Constitution. Basically competition between the President, the Congress, and the Supreme Court is what has allowed the United States to survive as a Democracy.

To get back to economics. Which system harnesses human greed, fear, selfishness, genius, and stupidity better, Communism or Capitalism.

Communism pretends that the human beings in charge are somehow less human, less greedy, less flawed than those evil Scrooge McDucks running the Western economies. Cuba, N.Korea, the USSR all show that is false.

The neo Communist Nanny Democracies of the EU also show the flaws of concentrated government power. Except for Germany, they simply do not produce the wealth needed, compared to the great Satan, America.

America is heading down that road of crony capitalist Socialist disaster. Obama promised to get rid of the lobbyists. He did not because he can't. The more you concentrate power into government, the more lobbyists are needed for citizens to influence their rulers. Since the rich and powerful can afford better lobbyists, guess what? Under Obama the gap between rich and poor increased. The opposite of the promised result.

Well duh!!!!

Fred Schnaubelt Loc: San Diego

It is clear whoever you are citing has no understanding of Capitalism other than consciously or unconsciously from a Marxist point of view. You write, "The flaw of cap­i­tal­ism is greed & nar­cis­sism (cap­i­tal­ism rewards greed, as long as you are not caught)."

Greed and narcissism has nothing to do with capitalism. Greed and narcissism are indeed human frailties. However, Capitalism is a system of social cooperation based on voluntary exchange. Voluntary exchange does not take place unless all parties feel in their own subjective minds (even if not the optimum) that they are better off after the exchange. This is why Capitalism is the only moral economic system ever devised. Under Capitalism consumers determine what is to be produced in what quantities and qualities, through their buying or abstention from buying. In several books and articles, Ludwig von Mises explains it in greater detail that is easy to understand.

Fred Schnaubelt Loc: San Diego

Chris, you alluded to it but did not emphasize it. "Wealth is not distributed --- it is earned." People are equal under the law but not necessarily under all other circumstances. There millions of people who can run faster than me, jump higher, taller, slimmer, better at math and better at anticipating the future and making more money than am I. Equal under the law yes, with no American required to bow down and kiss the shoes of even the richest among us. Those who think capitalism is unfair merely are advocating a kleptocracy in place of the "free market," where there is, as Leonard Read asseverated, "A wisdom a trillion times greater than any discrete group of men (or women)." Those who advocate more fairness really mean more "theft," with them being the arbiters (usually involving for them a handling charge).

ldsuttonjr Loc: ShangriLa

Fred: You make me proud..... M. Friedman would be proud!!!

So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear. That there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system. M Friedman

BigMike Loc: yerington nv

Exactly. Communism can only work if humans operate unselfishly and with good motives. The early Christian church tried a form of it and it's mentioned in the book of Acts. The account of Annanias and Saphirra illustrates the problem with communism, and apparently it didn't work well because it's never mentioned again.

Capitalism works despite human nature - to a point, at least - a point we are beginning to go beyond.

BigMike Loc: yerington nv

HAHAHA! I Just had a vision of that pudgy little North Korean dictator at a public event where people sing songs and recite poetry about him! "Greed and narcissism" the flaw of Capitalism indeed!
:lol: :lol: