Capitalism

[Rob C]

Dang, I forgot to praise humankind's great benefactors yesterday.

However, I did buy some stuff, so maybe that counts?

http://www.celebratecapitalism.org/

[Dr Dave]

That is a very silly website.

You know what comes next: Capitalism, like democracy, may suck, but it beats the alternatives.

[Pete C]

What's Zorn got to do with it?

[patricia]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

That is a very silly website.

You know what comes next: Capitalism, like democracy, may suck, but it beats the alternatives.

ALL systems, whether they involve investment, or the system under which the people are governed are wonderful, even perfect....................in theory.
The introduction of the unpredictability of human beings has proved to be the monkeywrench in the works, making a joke of the perfection of a theory, the moment it is put into practical use.
If you read about the virtues of democracy, or socialism, or even communism, they all look as if they would be the perfect system to assure that everyone is treated fairly. But, we all know that none of them are.

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by patricia

If you read about the virtues of democracy, or socialism, or even communism, they all look as if they would be the perfect system to assure that everyone is treated fairly. But, we all know that none of them are.

Capitalism, unlike socialism and communism, is not a system that is sold to us as having the potential to treat everyone fairly. It has other virtues. None of which are worth celebrating gaily with a "day." That's stupid.

[Sergio Zamora]

Prodos! Prodos! Prodos!

[Rob C]

As I believe the saying goes:

"We come to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, not to praise him."

[Nathaniel Catchpole]

Originally Posted by Gordon B

I spent about 20 minutes preparing my response to your questions on crony capitalism vs free market capitalism I felt that it was a waste of time because your response veered off in another direction without acknowledgement of the distinction.

It's my view that it is impossible to have capitalism without significant state involvement. The state was necessary to create the conditions by which people would have no means of earning a living except wage labour - the enclosures of the commons to give one example, there are plenty of others. The state is also necessary to protect private property without which capitalism can't function - witness the national guard defending commodities in New Orleans instead of helping the people stuck there. In both East and West capital as become more and more inseparable with the state, and is almost entirely dependent on it.

There may be different levels of actual cronyism - nepotism, old boy networks, etc. etc. depending on the relative position of different factions and specific ideologies.

However "free market capitalism" - a system free of corruption, of monopolies, of "corporate welfare" or whatever other impurities are blamed for the disfunction and irrationality of the global capitalist system - has never really existed and I don't see it coming to fruition any time soon. The problem the Libertarian Party, and you (Gordon) have, isn't much different to the problem that social democrat or green parties have - you want to reform capitalism into a moral and rational system, when that's simply not possible and it's been proved time and time again that it's not.

How do you propose to get from what we have now, to a truly free market?

[larrycohen]

I agree with you - there will never be a "truly free" market. To be "truly free" means anarchy. Every society that has ever existed has had some form of government, and every government that has ever functioned has had something to say about commerce.
I don't want free market capitalism. The bigger and stronger someone is, the bigger crime he is capable of committing. In a free market, it's me vs. a giant corporation, and I don't stand a chance. The obvious answer is to get organized. Well, we already did - we have an organization called the government. Assuming they work properly and aren't corrupt, we have police to patrol the streets, and the FDA, FTC, SEC, EPA, etc. to watch the large corporations, and I like it that way.

[Nathaniel Catchpole]

So you're not worried that the government protects giant corporations from the people on a daily basis then? And not only that, that the state actively intervenes on behalf of capital to free up new markets, ensure a compliant workforce etc. etc.

Free market capitalism isn't anarchism by the way, although some free market capitalists make the same mistake.

[larrycohen]

I don't think I understood everything you wrote the first time I answered.
I thought you didn't want free market capitalism, but now that I re-read what you wrote, it seems you're lamenting that it won't work.

>>The state was necessary to create the conditions by which people would have no means of earning a living except wage labour
There are lots of people who own their own business or are free-lance. Not everyone is an hourly worker.

>>So you're not worried that the government protects giant corporations from the people on a daily basis then?
I want a competent, uncorrupted government that protects me from big companies that I can't protect myself from, and yes, it should protect corporations from me in case I turn out to be a thief.
Aside from "evil", I think some government control can protect us from things like major depressions or runaway inflation.
This doesn't mean I like the way things are now. I'm just stating an ideal. Currently, I think the government is way too heavily influenced by large corporations with lots of money.

>>Free market capitalism isn't anarchism by the way, although some free market capitalists make the same mistake
If there is complete freedom, that means no regulations of any kind, so why isn't that anarchy?

[Nathaniel Catchpole]

I don't want capitalism full stop, but that doesn't stop me being interested in how people who support it think about it.

You'll have to wait until tomorrow for the proposed alternative 'cos it's time for bed.

[Gordon B]

Originally Posted by Nathaniel Catchpole

It's my view that it is impossible to have capitalism without significant state involvement. The state was necessary to create the conditions by which people would have no means of earning a living except wage labour - the enclosures of the commons to give one example, there are plenty of others. The state is also necessary to protect private property without which capitalism can't function

I've posted too manly times on the anti-war march thread so I'm going to punt here for tonight except to say that I agree with the part of your post I quoted above.

Alright, I'll rant a little bit.

Capitalism cannot work unless the government protects private property rights. I'm not talking property rights merely for the privileged few but property rights for the masses. Why do Afghanistan farmers produce opium? Because they don't have title on the farms where they work. They can't take out a mortgage on their house or land and invest the proceeds on crops that might take a few years to develop? Drugs are 'fast crops.'

Why are there so many illegal street vendors in poor countries? Because they don't have the political connections nor the cash to bribe the right government officials to bypass a 200 step process to gain legal license. Their capital is dead, too. A burgeoning small business owner cannot sell equity in his business nor take out a loan from the bank.

I highly recommend the following book:
The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (2000)
by Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto. De Soto is a truly great man and an original thinker .

[Dr Dave]

Look, I'm as much a free-market capitalist as the next fellow. Perhaps a bit moreso. But I understand that for a free market to be truly free, there must be rules: There don't have to be many, but there must be at least two: First, there must be equality of information available to buyers. Second, fraud cannot be tolerated. The first rule is fiendishly difficult to enforce. What is public information? What isn't? How much information can buyers reasonably expect to obtain before making a purchase? These are difficult questions, subject to interpretation and re-interpretation as technology and resultant quality of access change.

The second rule isn't so tough. If a company does something that could only have been done through deception, it must be punished--size of punishment, alas, to be determined by a jury, although there's no reason there couldln't be absolute caps adjustable for inflation (Whose definition of inflation? Can it ever change? That's all gotta be worked out, too...damn, this two rule stuff is hard work...)

I had a marketing professor whose best line was "Always fight fair...and always stay out of fair fights." Companies that resort to fraud are companies that don't fight fair. As for staying out of fair fights, that's what innovation is all about, isn't it?

[rollhead]

Why am I not surprised that a psuedo-intellectual like Gordon would love Hernando de Soto who promotes a Bush-like "ownership society"?

Hernando de Soto -- "The Patron Saint of the Global Elite"


The De Soto Delusion
Peruvian Economist Hernando de Soto's ideas for helping the poor have made him a global celebrity. Now, if only those ideas worked. …
By John Gravois (on Slate)
Updated Friday, Jan. 28, 2005, at 9:33 PM PT


It's Davos week, which means it's time for the world's most influential people to bask in the catchy wisdom of Hernando de Soto.

Author of The Mystery of Capital and The Other Path, armchair consultant to numerous heads of state, and white knight for the cause of property formalization—Hernando de Soto is practically the patron saint of the global elite. At last year's annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, Bill Clinton, the event's unofficial king, publicly declared that de Soto was "probably the world's most important living economist." For the left, de Soto has formulated the most seemingly practical ideas for reducing global poverty. For the right, de Soto offers the most compelling way to market capitalism to the poor.

Beginning with his first projects in Peru in the mid-'90s, de Soto's ideas have been packaged and peddled all over the Third World—by the World Bank, by the U.S. Agency for International Development, and by de Soto's own Lima think tank, the Institute for Liberty and Democracy—as the new conventional wisdom for fighting poverty. On the white board, de Soto's ideas flatter the imaginations and sensibilities of Davos-types (particularly the American ones). But on the ground, it turns out that de Soto's ideas are doing very little to solve the actual problems of poor people.

De Soto's vision of the Third World is instinctively appealing. He sees industrious, entrepreneurial slum-dwellers, toiling with boundless ingenuity, yet living in homes and owning businesses that are theirs only by de facto possession and jury-rigged local agreements, not by de jure deed and title. De Soto calls all this informally held property "dead capital," because it can't be leveraged to produce growth—it can't be mortgaged, because it lacks a proper title to guarantee it as collateral. He says there are gobs and gobs of this dead stuff out there: $9.3 trillion worth, by his estimate, skulking in the ghetto.

Mindful of the fact that "the single most important source of funds for new businesses in the United States is a mortgage on the entrepreneur's house," de Soto's plan is, quite simply, to make homeowners out of the world's poor squatters. Neighborhood by neighborhood, slum by slum, he wants to formalize the vast extralegal world by dotting it with individual property titles. Once that's done, he promises, the poor will have access to credit, loans, and investment, as their dead assets are transformed—voilà!—into live capital.

De Soto is right to point out the importance of legally sorting out who owns what in the Third World. Secure property rights probably are indeed, as he puts it, the "hidden architecture" of modern economies—or something like that, anyway. On the level of gee-whiz metaphors and moving rhetoric, de Soto deserves a lot of credit: He's brought an unprecedented degree of attention and funding to the vital and fascinating issue of squatters and informal economies. But he has botched the details, especially by pushing one solution—individual property titles—for all different kinds of poor people in all different kinds of poor places.

From the field, the verdicts are rolling in: In some corners of the world, the land-titling programs inspired by de Soto's work are proving merely ineffective. In other places, they are showing themselves to be downright harmful to the poor people they set out to help.

First, the merely useless:

In various parts of the Third World, newly legalized squatters on the outskirts of cities are discovering that a property title supplies little of the benefit de Soto projects. Government studies out of de Soto's native Peru suggest that titles don't actually increase access to credit much after all. Out of the 200,313 Lima households awarded land titles in 1998 and 1999, only about 24 percent had gotten any kind of financing by 2002—and in that group, financing from private banks was almost nil. In other words, the only capital infusion—which was itself modest—was coming from the state.

Reports from Turkey, Mexico, South Africa, and Colombia suggest similar trends. "In Bogota's self-help settlements," writes Alan Gilbert, a London professor of geography who has done extensive research on land issues in Colombia and other parts of Latin America, "property titles seem to have brought neither a healthy housing market nor a regular supply of formal credit."

This is probably because banks realize they don't stand to gain much from repossessing shanties in rotten locations. Faced with a massive surge in legalized but tenuous properties owned by poor people, banks have simply adjusted their criteria for lending, and in some cases care more about stable employment than a land title. Not only that, but the actual real estate markets in many of these shantytowns on urban outskirts are stagnant, which puts a serious damper on any potential gains on capital—live or dead.

"You cannot accumulate capital if there is no market in which to trade your asset," Gilbert writes.

Now for the downright harmful:

In places where real estate markets are buoyant, titles turn out to be quite a hot commodity. Too hot, in fact. In June of 2002, for example, the World Bank kicked off a several-year project to distribute over a million titles throughout Cambodia. In Phnom Penh, the capital, untitled land near the city center has been selling for about $20 to $30 per square meter over the past few years. Titled properties nearby have been selling for around 10 times that much. For a poor squatter in the middle of the capital city, the promise of a title would seem to be a road to riches. In practice, it's more like a sign taped to his back that says, "Kick me."

In the nine months or so leading up to the project kickoff, a devastating series of slum fires and forced evictions purged 23,000 squatters from tracts of untitled land in the heart of Phnom Penh. These squatters were then plopped onto dusty relocation sites several miles outside of the city, where there were no jobs and where the price of commuting to and from central Phnom Penh (about $2 per day) surpassed whatever daily wage they had been earning in town before the fires. Meanwhile, the burned-out inner city land passed immediately to some of the wealthiest property developers in the country. (Prominent among them was Cambodia's richest thug.)

Since then, a similar pattern has continued elsewhere in the city, says Alain Durand-Lasserve, a land-management expert who has worked in Cambodia during the last couple of years. Investors have been buying squatter-occupied state land from various government officials in Phnom Penh, who pocket the money, thus looting the land both from the state and from the poor. In other cases in Phnom Penh—and also in Manila, in the Philippines—speculators or middle-income groups went out before titling programs took effect and bought land at slightly better than informal prices directly from the squatters, who happily sold off for a bit of cash. Then the investors just waited for the titling program—and the attendant leap in value and legal security—to come their way.

It turns out that titling is more useful to elite and middle-income groups who can afford to bother with financial leverage, risk, and real estate markets. For very poor squatters in the inner city—who care most about day-to-day survival, direct access to livelihood, and keeping costs down—titles make comparatively little sense. These poorer groups either fall prey to eviction or they sell out, assuming they'll find some other affordable pocket of informality that they can settle into. The problem is, with titling programs on the march, such informal pockets are disappearing fast. So, the poor sell cheap or are evicted, then can't find a decent new place to settle, losing the crucial geographic advantage they once had in the labor market.

What to do? Here's one idea: Geoffrey Payne, a British urban planning consultant with years of experience working on land-tenure issues in Cambodia and elsewhere, recommends temporarily insulating slums from the commercial land market by granting informal neighborhoods groups land rights for some period of time. During that period, he says, the neighborhood can be upgraded and basic services brought in, allowing land values to inch up toward parity with the surrounding real estate market. Then, after a number of years, the neighborhood gets a full, group land title, which can then be subdivided into individual titles if people are willing to take on the costs. By taking these incremental steps, he says, you shelter the poor from the shock of a titling gold rush.

But sadly, the Davos set doesn't have a crush on Geoffrey Payne, and de Soto has never sat down for a debate with him. Nor, in fact, does de Soto seem to pay attention to any of the lawyers, urban planners, geographers, sociologists, or economic development experts who have catalogued the real-life flaws in his ideas.

I did catch up with de Soto myself just after Davos a couple of years ago, and I asked him for his own solution to the squeeze on poor squatters brought on by formalization. He told me wealthy land-grabbers should know that it's in their best interests to have the productive power of the poor brought into the economy. When I replied that those elites don't seem to be aware of that, de Soto simply offered: "I can make them aware."


John Gravois is staff reporter at the Chronicle of Higher Education and a contributing editor at Sixbillion.org. He can be reached at jgravois@fastmail.fm.

[Gary Sisco]

Competition? That shit's for the little guy.

What we're seeing today is another Robber Baron era, only taken to the nth degree, like the R.B.s of old couldn't have imagined.

Money goes where money is.

[Nathaniel Catchpole]

Originally Posted by Gordon B

Capitalism cannot work unless the government protects private property rights. I'm not talking property rights merely for the privileged few but property rights for the masses. Why do Afghanistan farmers produce opium? Because they don't have title on the farms where they work. They can't take out a mortgage on their house or land and invest the proceeds on crops that might take a few years to develop? Drugs are 'fast crops.'

Capitalism depends on protecting existing private property rights for people who own it, simple as. For cash-crop agricultural workers to gain access to their land they'd need to expropriate the land from its owner. You can continue to use Afghan opium farmers if you like, but I'm going to use Del Monte/Dole banana growers in South America (who's kids are born without hands and feet due to agro-chemicals) for an additional example. For them to (maybe) be able to work in conditions where their children aren't born disfigured - for them to have "title" to their land - they'd have to expropriate that land from Del Monte.

Such activities, an example of which might be the Zanon factory in Argentina, almost inevitably result in state repression - since it's legally theft. If States try to legislate for it - say something similar to Chavez in Venezuela - then you get capital flight and military intervention.

Even if you give people (back) their titles to land, all you do is turn them back into peasant farmers from agricultural workers - with the same economic vulnerability they had before. History doesn't go backwards however, so to gain any market for their goods, they may still be forced to buy seed/chemicals from agribusinesses, but with all the capital risk entirely on them, and will still have to find markets for their goods. Or they could just go back to subsistence farming - a great step forwards that is.

As to taking out mortgages - why should they have to risk their home and livelihood in order to pay back multiples of what they borrow if they're successful - the people lending them the money almost certainly aren't.

Why are there so many illegal street vendors in poor countries?

Why are there so many illegal street vendors in rich countries? I get chinese DVD sellers 'round my area all the time. Why do so many large companies depend on illegal immigrant labour for their workforce?

Because they don't have the political connections nor the cash to bribe the right government officials to bypass a 200 step process to gain legal license.

Not for those reasons is it.

Their capital is dead, too. A burgeoning small business owner cannot sell equity in his business nor take out a loan from the bank.

Why does the bank have all the money in the first place?

Unless you're going to start from year zero, you'll never get to the sort of society you claim to want - thousands of years of history predicate against it.

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (2000)
by Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto. De Soto is a truly great man and an original thinker .

I'll read that if you'll read this:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

[Dr Dave]

Where do I sign up to be a pseudo-intellectual? Will I be eligible for a prize?

[Gordon B]

Originally Posted by Nathaniel Catchpole

Capitalism depends on protecting existing private property rights for people who own it, simple as. For cash-crop agricultural workers to gain access to their land they'd need to expropriate the land from its owner. You can continue to use Afghan opium farmers if you like, but I'm going to use Del Monte/Dole banana growers in South America (who's kids are born without hands and feet due to agro-chemicals) for an additional example. For them to (maybe) be able to work in conditions where their children aren't born disfigured - for them to have "title" to their land - they'd have to expropriate that land from Del Monte.

Such activities, an example of which might be the Zanon factory in Argentina, almost inevitably result in state repression - since it's legally theft. If States try to legislate for it - say something similar to Chavez in Venezuela - then you get capital flight and military intervention.

Even if you give people (back) their titles to land, all you do is turn them back into peasant farmers from agricultural workers - with the same economic vulnerability they had before. History doesn't go backwards however, so to gain any market for their goods, they may still be forced to buy seed/chemicals from agribusinesses, but with all the capital risk entirely on them, and will still have to find markets for their goods. Or they could just go back to subsistence farming - a great step forwards that is.

As to taking out mortgages - why should they have to risk their home and livelihood in order to pay back multiples of what they borrow if they're successful - the people lending them the money almost certainly aren't.

Why are there so many illegal street vendors in rich countries? I get chinese DVD sellers 'round my area all the time. Why do so many large companies depend on illegal immigrant labour for their workforce?


Not for those reasons is it.

Why does the bank have all the money in the first place?

Unless you're going to start from year zero, you'll never get to the sort of society you claim to want - thousands of years of history predicate against it.



I'll read that if you'll read this:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

De Soto addresses all your issues and Marx, too. If you are intrigued, you might want to read it. If not, forget it. No quid pro quos.

[walto]

Even if you give people (back) their titles to land, all you do is turn them back into peasant farmers from agricultural workers - with the same economic vulnerability they had before. History doesn't go backwards however, so to gain any market for their goods, they may still be forced to buy seed/chemicals from agribusinesses, but with all the capital risk entirely on them, and will still have to find markets for their goods. Or they could just go back to subsistence farming - a great step forwards that is.

Yes, that's why George believed that returning the full value of land was much better than Lincoln's "40 Acres and a Mule," which, while it would have certainly redistributed, and probably have made a number of different people today wealthy, wouldn't have solved the problem of poverty. It's not the title people need, it's the rent. And, it doesn't have to be grabbed whole, it can be dribbled back--avoiding that whole nasty revolution business.

[rollhead]

September 27, 2005
Cronies at the Till (New York Times)
The first results are in on who is set to profit from the Katrina cleanup, and - surprise - many of the firms winning major contracts have big political connections. Congressional investigators are already looking into AshBritt, a Pompano Beach, Fla., company with ties to Mississippi's governor, Haley Barbour - the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. AshBritt has nabbed $568 million in contracts for trash removal. Questions have also been raised about the political connections of two other major contractors: the Shaw Group, and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. Both companies have been represented by Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency - although Mr. Allbaugh says he does not help any of his clients obtain federal contracts.

And there's more. An article in yesterday's Times by Eric Lipton and Ron Nixon reports that more than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by FEMA for Katrina work were awarded without bidding or with limited competition. The Times article even finds a federal employee - Richard Skinner, the inspector general for the Homeland Security Department - willing to go on the record with his concern, saying, "We are very apprehensive about what we are seeing."

So are we. The government is spending more than a quarter of a billion dollars every day on rescue, relief and reconstruction along the Gulf Coast. Anyone who pays taxes in America should be concerned about how the money is being spent and who is profiting. We think that when Congress appropriates money for disaster relief, the advantage should be maximized for the victims, not for the same cast of characters that have been profiting from no-bid contracts in Iraq. Kellogg, Brown & Root, Americans may recall, is the company that came up with those $100-per-bag laundry bills for work in Iraq.

All of this comes back to cronyism. The resignation of the FEMA chief, Michael Brown, was only one of the recent departures. The head of federal procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget resigned just before he was arrested on charges of lying to federal investigators, and the Pentagon's former inspector general has left for the private sector but remains the target of a Congressional inquiry.

Last week, the Homeland Security Department appointed the National Weather Service's chief financial officer, Matthew Jadacki, to head a new Office for Hurricane Katrina Oversight. That's a step in the right direction. The office itself is a good idea, and Mr. Jadacki's experience is a welcome contrast with that of many of the inexperienced political appointees who have been exposed by this crisis. But the administration will have to go a lot further if it wants any chance of regaining the American people's trust, which it has so squandered. The true test of the new oversight office will be in its financing and staffing. America doesn't need a public relations stunt; it needs a functioning means of curbing abuse.

A promising legislative initiative comes from Senators Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, and Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois. They have called for a chief financial officer to review expenditures before the money is spent, rather than more inspectors general to audit records after the fact. That strikes us as a fine idea.

[rollhead]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

Where do I sign up to be a pseudo-intellectual? Will I be eligible for a prize?

Yes, I think every box of Ayn Rand novels or Cato Institute bromides comes with an Aladdin Lamp inside. Just rub it and an "ownership society" pops out to cure all the ails.

[walto]

I like this recent editorial by Mike Mennonno on Katrina and cronyism.

[Nathaniel Catchpole]

Originally Posted by Gordon B

De Soto addresses all your issues and Marx, too. If you are intrigued, you might want to read it. If not, forget it. No quid pro quos.

Didn't think you'd take me up on it.

[sonic1]

In light of the current news from France, and as well out own debacles here on our own beloved soil, I have been visiting the old debate of capitalism vs. socialism again. And I wonder at the choices we are given. It seems to me that parties either lean towards a more socialistic solution (which staunch capitalists claim leave INCENTIVE to be desired) or toward an unfettered capitalist solution (where socialists would claim unfairness rules).

I am mostly concerned about my own country for now, where news is full of corruption as so well displayed by the caught hands of Enron.

My question, I guess posed to staunch capitalists, is this: Though I am not for a socialist solution (at least to date) cannot capitalism show some self restraint? I mean, does not the average worker also need incentive? Why should a CEO of a major corporation be rewarded whether his company fails or thrives? What is the point of the idea of incentive if those few privaledged to have INCENTIVE get rewarded whether or not their conduct is rewardable?

Can we not impose some stricter rules that mearly say, you cannot give youself a huge raise and bolt if you fail as a leader? That you can only make soooo much above what your company is worth? Surely there is still incentive if you chance on becoming a millionaire upon merit rather than position. As it stands today, capitalism rewards position, not merit, and position is earned more by luck and most often by social rank rather than one's true worth in skill, ability, and worthiness.

While I already see the troubles in making such measurements, I also see the possibility in doing better than we do now. And the law could certainly show some leadership here in making some stricter rules controlling the most egregious offenders. So far, justice in this respect is so rare, it makes national headlines everytime it occurs. But for every offender that is actually punished, many more get by unpunished, rewarded, and mar the belief and trust of people in the economy as being fair and for all.

So for those of you who really believe in capitalism, and democracy, and freedom and whatnot, I wonder how you manage such knowledge, or if indeed you truly believe only the guilty get caught? I cannot somehow imagine anyone can look at the current economy and not see the many many offenders and abusers of the free market. If we are to have law at all, should it not be held to everyone?

I agree with capitalists that socialism leaves a lot to be desired. If recent news from france does not convince one of that, I would like to hear why. The example of the success of Sweeden hardly means anything for our comparitively diverse population. But I refuse to believe that our only choices are unfairness for everyone, or fairness only for the lucky. I am not suggesting we can make life fair, but with all the creativity there is in other sciences, and the solutions we have found in other realms, it seems a true lack of wit resides in economics (and politics). How come we can fit a library's worth of information on the head of a pin, but cannot fix our old leaky ideas of economics and politics? It is one of the greatest mysteries to me.

[Gentle Giant]

This argument is philosophical more than political, and I acknowledge my limitations in both arenas. However, in simplest terms, socialism represents and requires something of a police state to keep people at a certain level of accomplishment and freedom (or, as Lincoln termed it, the right to rise).

If there were such a thing as Compassionate Capitalism, I'd be all for it.

For as JFK once said, "Of those to whom much is given, much is required."

[groover]

At the time it was originally conceived, capitalism was a much fairer system than the monarchical feudalism that preceded it. I don't think anyone really wants to return to that system, except maybe for a few extreme conservatives. Obviously pure capitalism has it's flaws, as does pure socialism.

[sonic1]

Originally Posted by groover

At the time it was originally conceived, capitalism was a much fairer system than the monarchical feudalism that preceded it. I don't think anyone really wants to return to that system, except maybe for a few extreme conservatives. Obviously pure capitalism has it's flaws, as does pure socialism.

So with the current disatisfaction that many feel regarding the current system, is it not important enough to pass some legislation to control some of the worst elements so prevalent? Everytime I have mentioned such to people, at least of the most capitalistic leaning, they rant about incentive and their fears of putting too great a weight on the economy such as some light legislation would bring.

I think it is really silly. Even if there were some immediate reactions to such news, would it not be for the better of the economy, even by economic arguments, to keep the most egregious abusers of the system from committing their crimes?

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by groover

At the time it was originally conceived, capitalism was a much fairer system than the monarchical feudalism that preceded it. I don't think anyone really wants to return to that system, except maybe for a few extreme conservatives. Obviously pure capitalism has it's flaws, as does pure socialism.

I agree.

I don't think a perfect system exists.

But I'll take capitalism over socialism any day of the week.

[sonic1]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

I agree.

I don't think a perfect system exists.

But I'll take capitalism over socialism any day of the week.

You obviously didn't read my post. I am discussing something beyond those two choices; I proposing some ammendments to our own leaky system.