Capitalism: The Hated Enemy of the Children of the West

[Big Don]

Capitalism: The Hated Enemy of the Children of the West
Incendiary Insight EXCERPT:
At this moment, I'm sitting in my home and watching television. Typing this I'm using a Dell XPS laptop. Outside, I can see my swimming pool with moonlight reflecting off its shimmering surface. If you are reading this, you're also using a computer.
<<<SNIP>>>

Capitalism is the best economic engine for creating wealth and prosperity that has ever been developed. The West once was capitalist, but today it is a corporatist juggernaut in it's death throes, whereby corporations and banks control the government in their favor, inevitably leading to corruption and decline. This is not capitalism, not even in the broadest interpretation of the word. I've posted a picture in a previous post on North Korea and South Korea to make a point: a capitalist country lives in prosperity, a dictatorship does not. If capitalism is so horrible, why has America lead the way in innovation, technology, scientific output, and made Americans the wealthiest (by far) workers of any nation on earth? The poor in America live better than middle-class Europeans.

It's time to stop demonizing an entity that we have already benefited immensely from. It's damn time for Millennials to stop taking the fashionable position of saying "capitalism does not work" when they are the inheritors of a capitalist empire. The Occupiers in, at last count, 147 cities nationwide, protest a system that has been overtaken by corporations that are already in bed with the government anyway. If they have a problem with wealth, they should aim their frustrations at a government that sucked away trillions in tax-payer money for sinfully corrupt banks. Capitalism is not the enemy here, excessive government control and regulations is.

We don't want to be the Soviet Union, more government is not the answer to our economic woes.

 

[Sukerkin]

I don't know if it'd be a surprise, given that I seem to get to stand in the (British) Liberal camp on most issues raised here but I agree with most of that .

The only false note was about the banks and regulation - it wasn't that there was too much, quite the reverse and what there was of it was pushing in quite the wrong direction. I've said before that I've been saying for years that the house of cards was ripe for a gust of wind to blow it down. If I as a merely qualified economist (i.e. not famous or published) could see it then you can bet that others could too and that means that either they were powerless to stop it or it was allowed to happen as a means of hoovering out the last shred of freedom of action from the working and lower-middle classes.

 

[oftheherd1]

Well, I agree that capitalism in general is the best way, since humans always want to achieve and do better. I also like the "corporatist juggernaut." But it goes beyond simple excesses in corporate America (and that paradigm is a problem), to include the fact that the US Congress is for sale. Not in the simple sense of blatant bribery, but the way laws are written to allow corporations to submit (through lobbyists) laws, and reward sympathetic congressmen with contributions to political campaigns, and their "slush" funds. There is some greed involved in what is done. But I think a bigger problem is in campaign financing. Until that is fixed, congressmen will, of necessity, remain at risk of not passing laws that are good for the country, but the paying corporations.

So although I agree capitalism is the better way, I think it has gotten out of control, focusing on quick profits, with no consideration for what may happen in the future. There is no thought of sustained growth. Quick profits for board and CEO bonuses. Whatever is left can go to keeping the business in business, and paying a dividend to stockholders. It tends to get spread rather thin.

Sukerkin, I suspect you can explain that better than me, assuming you agree. If you don't, please feel free to correct me.

 

[Sukerkin]

You didn't do too badly, good sir, other than the fact that Corporations are a cancer on the body of Capitalism. They distort and eventually break the markets they are a part of and become a pestilence as they consume all competition, like locusts, even dismembering other corporations to feed the ravening appetite. Capitalism only works well when there is competition and a multiplicity of players in the market; corporations, tho' many see them as the the ultimate in capitalism, are actually anti-capitalist, for they inevitably lead to monopoly.

 

[Omar B]

I strongly agree. A man can make his fortune with a good idea, a plan, hard work, and he's also free to fail too. I'm all for it, sink or swim based upon your own devices, rather than being kept afloat hanging on the edge of everyone's raft.