Indeed. And just to back up the comment by Doodler that you were responding to (just kidding, Moose)

The big reason that pure capitalism absolutely cannot work is that a pure capitalist society doesn't do anything to control monopolies. When the US government breaks up a monopoly, they are not being capitalist, but they are definitely doing the right thing.

Which makes me wonder, now that we are in the age of globalization, how will we stop large corporations from destroying the competitive system? There isn't a whole lot that the US government can do against a multinational corporation. And another issue, how do we remove corruption in our government? Microsoft was very clearly anticompetitive and in case you aren't aware, it hurts everyone including you. But the real reason they were taken to court was because they didn't do any lobbying. They've learned their lesson. Now they pay off the right people and they will never be investigated again.

Capitalism has nothing to do with individual rights. There is no true capitalist society active today - because a truely capitalist society wouldn't worry about failure. Capitalism would allow people to fail and place no obligation on those that succeed to bail out those that don't. Failure is just part of the process. A capitalist society might have an income tax to pay for defense and infrastructure - but it wouldn't be tiered. Why take it easy on someone just because they were less successful. Likewise- why punish success?

Truth is, we're all some blend of capitalism and communism. It's just a matter of what degree.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

Can we put an "early" or "until you're prepared" on the end of that? I don't think it'd be good if everybody quit having kids altogether...

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2008 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

I disagree. For Capitalism to work, individuls have to feel that their property rights are secure. If your assets can be taken by an unruly mob (or a ruly one ), or if you are given false information in an exchange, or if entities fail to honor contracts then the inefficancy caused by distrust and suspicion causes the whole system to collapse. Capitalism is not Anarchy. It requires a government willing to fairly protect property rights.

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

Really, and here I was under the impression that a feature of capitalism was materialism... You are quite right here, though I find that an unfortunate tragedy... He who has the gold, makes the rules. Nothing like making your competition unhealthy before they have a chance to compete, yadda yadda yadda...
Hardly.

Oh yeah. Those rights.

I was thinking more along the lines of perceived right not to starve to death or be homeless should you be lazy and unproductive, or simply run into bad luck.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

That's a right?! Oh cripes...now I'm ill...

Quite right. There are purely totalitarian governments out there with no semblence of capilatilism.

I do appreciate this forums expectations that we choose our words very carefully when making statements. As a group - you insure nobody get's away with blanket statements that aren't well thought out and correctly worded.

Nice work.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

It's kind of interesting how language has changed. People used to use the word "liberty" to mean something that the government has no authority over. For example, deciding who you can and cannot marry. We would call that a "right" today, but we have *completely* lost the concept that there is anything that the government does not have authority over. I would love to ask any member of congress to please list some things that the government cannot legislate, even if they want to very badly. I'm certain they would give me the deer-in-headlights look. That would be a foreign concept to them.

This attitude is epitomized in the original poster's question. It never even occurred to him for a second that maybe taking all your money is morally wrong, or maybe it is beyond the purview of the government. It just never even occurred to him. That amazes me. His teachers completely failed him.

I work at a university. True story, about a month ago someone wrote a message on the whiteboard in the lounge outside the computer lab. The message said, "our government spends less money on AIDS research in a whole year than it spends on the military in one day," and the message went on a rather laughable political rant. I wrote underneath all of this, "that's because the military is a proper role of government, while AIDS research is not."

Well, my message was erased (college students are very intolerant of other people's views). But I guess I made an impression because the next day they had written, "proper role? According to whom, you??" I wrote back, "Locke, Hamilton, Jefferson. How did you make it all the way to university without learning this?" That message was erased to, which really made me smile.

Our founding fathers would have used the word "right" to describe something that you are not born with, but which you may demand. For example, if I rent your spare bedroom, then I have the right to occupy it - I may demand access to it. I might also lose that right if for example, I violate our contract. But liberty is something you have that nobody can take away, and if someone tries then you should die defending it. Somewhere along the way, we lost the whole concept of liberty and limits on government.

Oooo! I love him! Was that before he crashed on the Island?

Sorry.

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

I agree with most of your coments except that above. Rights were considered natural rights and present in nature prior to the establishment of governments (or societies) which was a passing of some rights from individual to the whole. Your example is one of a contract right between individuals - which is fine. Real natural rights include the right to continue living, to eat, to defend one's self and to own property. Note that one's own body is property - as is a part - like a kidney. Slavery came in two flavors where one was contractual and a mechanism by which many people came here voluntarily as indentured servants. The other - was a refusal to accept the natural rights or even the humaness of some victims much less acknowledge their natural rights or even those of their descendants. It was a rather insideous evil in existance at the time of the founding and was dealt with at great cost later.

Nowadays, it seems that 'rights' have been spread to include the 'right' of one person to the property of another or insideously, the right to have another enslaved for a portion of the year to provide benefits to the voting majority. This isn't natural rights but merely a tyranny by a majority, which heralds the demise of great republics.

It may be the most important, but it doesn't seem to be the only thing lost in the last few decades. Anyone wanna join me in the 2+2=5 movement - all we need is consensus.

It's not a dictatorship when you vote for your dictator, and what on Earth does "communistic" mean, anyway?

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

Dredgin' this up for a few to defend myself. Real estate where I am is pretty outrageously overpriced.

Those are truely horrible things that honestly could happen to anyone at any time but you forgot to tell the end of the story which, I might add is the important part. Because you have a good education and a strong work/survival ethic you were able to come back from those hard times without anyone redistributing Bill Gates assets to you. Even when you had no money and a mountain of debit you still had a marketable asset: You. When you had no job and a mountain of debit to deal with you still were not poor.

In 1994 my dad was laid off from his job as Quality Control Manager for a major plumbing fitting manufacturer. It took him about 9 months to find a new job as a QC Evaluator at a competing company but during that nine months he had to sell one of the family cars, the house and ran through a large portion of his saving. He eventually accepted the new job making much less because the money was running out and he HAD to find a job soon. He stayed with that new company for 2 years before, once again he was laid off due to downsizing. In the interviening two years he had rebuilt most of his saving but the second lay off once again wiped him out before he found a new job, this time making about double what the first job he had been laid off from paid. He stayed with that company until about two years ago when the Corporate leadership decided to shake things up by firing all of the management at the plant he worked in, including him and replace them with new blood. For the last two years my mother and father have been living off of thier savings while my dad looked for a new job. The problem of course is that he's 62 years old with a masters degree and three bachelors degrees. He is to close to retirement age and over qualified to be hired. Any company in the world would rather have a young kid right out of college who is full of fresh new idea's and can be hired for a quarter of what they would have to pay my dad. After almost two years of looking for a job he has sold his house in California and moved back to Kentucky where most of our family is at. He spent the last year researching business opportunities and finally decided to purchase a "Molly Maids" Franchise which should be opening its doors in about two weeks. Since he can't find a job, he just opened his own business. Through all the hard times with no paycheck coming in and no light at the end of the tunnel my dad has never been poor.

Poor people, in my mind are not those who worked hard all thier lives to carve out thier little niche in the world and had it all stolen from them. Poor people, the ones who make the re-distribution of wealth plan not work, are those who have no marketable skills and no desire to get a marketable skill. The people who sit home collect welfare and expect the government to take care of them are the poor people.

I not only graduated from high school, I graduated from college. I had a kid, but I gave her up for adoption the day after she was born. I've never even tried drugs, and I've never had a credit card.

I'm still poor. Part of that is that I graduated from college in 2001, just a few months before the job market got really bad, and part is that I have really lousy genes; I have three serious health conditions that prevent me from working.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

"As part of our new 5 year plan, we will be conducting a broad correction of the real estate values so that all will be equal!! Property will all be valued at $10,000 per acre!!! Everyone will receive one acre and you will be notified of your new address in two weeks. Buildings will be valued based on cost of the materials used to construct them, as determined by our new Ministry of Economics!!!"



Just my luck. One acre - right in the middle of the Bonneville Salt Flats.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

Well, if hard work, strong values and good choices were all it would take to get rich, I´d be rich by now...

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If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.