[rogerhb]

My problem with capitalism is that money is supposed to be a tool used by people to aid their transactions, but instead the system gets inverted and the economy and money then becomes more important than people.

You could say that socialism suffers from similar because the society is supposed to serve the needs of the people and in the end people become subservient to the system.

I'll vote for liberty without property rights!

[Raxozanne]

My biggest beef against capitalism is wage slavery and labour flexibility.
The subsequent lack of job and financial security for people is very bad and causes alot of stress. Also making homes into tradable commodities was a bad idea as some people will invariably be homeless which I consider appalling as I believe that shelter and a stable home a basic human right.

Globalisation cannot continue on into the future because of PO anyway so we will have to find another system.

Perfect capitalism without government intervention will never exist. That is a pipedream. Even if it did there would be alot of problems. This is accounted for by the multitutde of public monitoring services in place (food inspectors etc.)

Also you may say that business is helping the third world, well only when that third world country is cheap. If it can find an even cheaper country, big business is off.
article

[Macsporan]

"I must" must I? Well I don't think I will. I do not think any argument I could advance will have any effect on your lack of realism and immovable bigotry. If you want the truth read some history. If you don’t want to then you obviously don’t care about truth. Do it yourself. I’m not your free history tutor.

Nor do I have the time and leisure to solve all the world's problems in detail in order to amuse you.

In any case, because you don't actually read my posts, indeed you seem deaf to everything except the sound of your own voice; you probably didn't notice that I am not advocating Socialism.

I am advocating a Mixed Economy with Private Enterprise regulated by international conventions to ensure that capital flows within and between nations are invested in the public interest, not irresponsible speculation, and the provision of State Welfare to take the edge off the instability and inequity of the Capitalist System. This was, and in some place still is, the most successful socio-economic arrangement ever devised. Of that there can be no argument.

I have already stated at some length what I propose. I see no reason to repeat myself to someone who is determined to see no evil in modern or historic Capitalism.

I will however with pleasure demolish some of your more outrageous and silly claims for the interest and benefit of those who might be following our correspondence.

“Inform yourself better before launching accusations at people. Especially when your entire worldview is based on the demonization of a group of people whose only crime has been the advocacy of peace and liberty for all.”

What they actually advocate is corporate oligopoly and low-wage slavery. They don’t and never have given a damn about anyone’s freedom except their own freedom to crush the worker and swindle the consumer. There is a world-full of evidence for this, including many smug, gloating pronouncements of the people who are actually doing this.

”Here's some cold hard truth. In socialism, or social democracy, you aren't in charge.”

What on earth are you talking about? You’re completely out of touch; intoxicated by your own fanatical beliefs. You seem to have a default setting that everyone in the world is a healthy, white, middle-class Western male of independent means. Is a worker in some sweatshop on Haiti or Shanghai “in charge”. In charge of what? Their own lives, pay, working conditions? The poor are not free. Capitalism in the modern world isn’t some anarcho-syndicalist democracy, but a vicious dominion by huge corporations aptly named by Chomsky as “private tyrannies”, the feudal lords of the age.

In some ways they are worse. At least old-style feudal lords guaranteed their serfs a livelihood and were at least in part motivated by noblesse oblige. These days the corporate serfs can be sacked into starvation at the whim of a callous boss. Or beaten up, killed or sexually harassed. Is there anything in your precious economics that forbids such behaviour? No. The bottom line is all that counts.

“Liberalism makes you a free man, free to live your life however you will.”

See above. This is a theoretical construct only. In practice the poor are not free.

“In their mind that isn't right. In their mind you should dedicate yourself to the community, or the state, or to the glorious struggle to build the thousand year Reich.”

What, you think I’ve been listening to one of those legendary “outside agitators” that loom so large in bourgeoisie ideology?

Don’t make me laugh. I came to my own conclusions through my own learning which is both broader and deeper than yours. Yes, I do think we should struggle for the community and empower the state to deliver us from the heartless tyranny of Capitalist corporations.

Just in case you didn’t know, Nazi Germany was a Capitalist operation with a government of vicious, incompetent criminals, rather like the US today. The big capitalist combines had no trouble whatever in co-operating with their new masters.

Is there anything within Capitalist or economic theory that forbids such cooperation? No. All that matters is the bottom line and preserving their own wealth and power. That’s what China is about today. Pack rape: the State holds the people down and the Corporations do the raping. Funny, seems to happen just about everywhere, these days, and I don’t here economists weeping and wringing their hands about it.

“They don't care what your opinion of what is fair is.”

You’re talking about your own side here. Capitalism and economics exist in a moral vacuum. The only value is money, the only virtue is power.

“That is why socialist regimes always devolve into dictorial states. There is simply no other way to impose order in them.”

Name one Advanced Industrial Democratic Mixed Economy where this actually happened.

On second thoughts, don’t bother. I know a lot more about history and I can tell you there isn’t one.

The closest we’ve come to such an ugly transformation is the US and the UK today where regimes advocating bare-knuckle Capitalism and Corporate Welfare are using the poor excuse of Terrorism to curtail civil rights. Once again, you’re talking about your own side.

“What the hell? Did you know there is a popular saying, 'the oldest job in the world'? All these things you blame on capitalism EXISTED LONG BEFORE. They are not the fault of capitalism.”

I presume you are referring to prostitution here, “the oldest profession.” No, if you look closely you will see I made no such claim. What I am blaming Capitalism for is failing to provide sufficient, steady jobs so that women didn’t have to resort to this disgusting and degrading practice. There were about half a million full or part-time prostitutes in London alone throughout the 19th Century due to the inefficiencies and injustices and chronic failures of the Capitalist system. It would be the same today were it not for Social Welfare, which you would no doubt preach against all day and all night if anyone were inclined to listen.

“Do not believe the lies you have been fed by your socialist masters. They distort history just as they distort economic science to impose their will on you.”

I don’t have any socialist masters. I wish I did. They might pay me by the hour for arguing with a cloth-eared fool. I do this out of charity and love of truth, motivations that are perhaps mysterious to you.

Economics is no science. It has no experimental and deductive foundation. It is a fundamentalist dogmatic religion, (and a pretty poor one at that, having no rigorous Creation Myth, Moral Philosophy, Theodicy, Eschatology among many other things we usually expect of our religions), the last, and one of the most pernicious, to dominate the mind of Western Man.

“That may be how you feel, that is not how people do. The amount of charity and care given by free people in a free market system exceeds anything possible in any socialist system this world has ever seen.”

This is actually untrue, but I won’t go into detail because I am not arguing for a purely socialist system, as you are arguing for a purely capitalist one.

“The bottom line is that capitalists are more altruistic than anyone else in history because capitalism gave them the material means to be altruistic.”

Really? Tell me about the Irish Potato Famine, prostitution in 19th Century England, homelessness in the contemporary USA. Were Capitalists as altruistic as you assert these social catastrophes would not, could not have occurred. Welfare States emerged because private capitalist charity utterly failed to alleviate the inequities and inefficiencies of capitalist society.

“The international red cross is a capitalist organization”

No, it is a charitable organisation. Its primary function is not to make money for its shareholders, but to relieve misery and want caused by disaster. There is nothing in the theory of capitalism as preached by economists that enjoins acts of charity, and consequently they are not common on a scale enough to make any difference.

“Capitalists are just people, with all their flaws and all the virtues of human nature. To condemn capitalism is to condemn human nature, brotherhood, society and family.”

You have not established any necessary connection between Capitalism and Human Nature. In fact Capitalism is a very limited and limiting dogma that has nothing to say about at best, but is usually contemptuous of, whole sectors of the Human experience: such as brotherhood, society and family. Capitalism degrades brotherhood and tries to destroy it: it’s called Union Busting. The most infamous pundit proclaimed society does not exist. Capitalism devours larger and larger sections of the lives of its serfs as working-hours balloon, wrecking family life. Again, all that matters is the bottom line.

“You cannot wish scarcity away. It is a fundamental fact of existence. The poor may have little money but their money still commands the will of the producers.”

Scarcity is found most prominently among the poor, a fact which Capitalism does not offer any solution. A person without money does not exist on the Capitalist radar. It does not promise and end to social and economic inequality, in fact it glories in it as the engine of progress. Again if you are a healthy middle-class white Western male this is well and good, but since 98% of the world are not, as a solution to the world’s problems it is entirely nugatory, unless it is subject to State regulation and the vigilance of a strong Labour Unions.

“No one turns down money. Walmart is an enterprise constructed entirely for the purpose of lowering prices on every day consumer goods. Walmart improved the lot of the poor more than any socialist or union group ever could.”

Walmart was created to give a huge surplus to give its executives and shareholders by viciously exploiting its employees and contractors both in the Third World and the US. By decimating the US petty-bourgeoisie it has wrecked what little remained of the social cohesion of that unfortunate country. There is less and less between the Corporate Feudal aristocracy and a mass of exploited serfs.

Your claims are utterly ludicrous. Unions improve pay, job security and working conditions. Walmart, and their fellow capitalist pirates, do the opposite.

“If you were really so righteous you would be building houses for the poor or giving away free breakfast and lunch for poor kids. Instead you complain about capitalism on the internet and how it isn't fair that some people are poor regardless of whether or not it is the result of capitalism.”

My own efforts, like yours, would make little difference in the greater scheme of things. Redistributive taxation policies and systematic social welfare would. This is why I advocate them.

“People are even poorer in countries which adopted socialism.”

If you are talking about Sweden I have to disagree, the sort of Mixed Economy Social Democracy that I’m actually advocating. The poor in the US would regard the lives of the Swedish poor with envy.

”The truth, the only truth that matters, is that every argument you've made has been an argument AGAINST liberalism.”

What I have done is demonstrate, beyond any doubt, that laissez-faire Capitalism is a monstrously unjust, degraded and exploitative system, which although possessing some animal virtues, does not and never will live up to the grandiose, fantastic and utopian claims its besotted admirers, such as yourself, make for it.

“You have not made a single argument IN FAVOR of any other system, or demonstrated why this system would be a better state of affair.”

I actually have. Perhaps you don’t have the wit to understand what I’m talking about.

“You haven't because it is not possible. Liberalism is the only system of social cooperation which is acceptable by modern standards.”

“There is no alterative!” Thank you Baroness Thatcher. Cute dress. However there is and was an alternative, Mixed Economy, Social Welfare Democracy.

“Everything else devolves into slavery, or back to abject poverty, or both.”

I have already refuted this bizarre, nonsensical assertion.

“You must abandon all your delusions, you must face reality.”

Perhaps you could do the same. I have listed a number of your delusions and they are far more destructive than mine.

“Scarcity cannot be willed away. Inequality cannot be willed away.”

Scarcity can be significantly alleviated with money and redistributive taxation and social programs. Inequality ditto.

“They must be accepted and embraced.”

I do not share you heartless imperatives. I will no more do this than I will accept rape, torture, murder or any other form of injustice and cruelty.

“And a system that accept them as fact must be used for the improvement of the life of all.”

It doesn’t happen. It’s never happened. The system is actually designed for and by people who want to prevent this. They actually want to improve life for themselves and use all other people as instruments for their corrupt ambition.

“That is only possible through capitalism.”

What a joke!

The systematic large-scale doing of evil cannot lead to the systematic, large scale triumph of good.

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', 'M')y problem with capitalism is that money is supposed to be a tool used by people to aid their transactions, but instead the system gets inverted and the economy and money then becomes more important than people.

You could say that socialism suffers from similar because the society is supposed to serve the needs of the people and in the end people become subservient to the system.

I'll vote for liberty without property rights!

[rogerhb]

I'm with MacSporran on this.

If a couple of boardroom executives writing off hundreds of lives as worthless at the stroke of a pen to save 3 cents per sock is the solution to humanities problems then we all get what we deserve.

If that's the best mankind can come up with after 10,000 years since deciding having a garden might be a neat idea then we don't deserve the label "intelligent".

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', 'I')'m with MacSporran on this.

If a couple of boardroom executives writing off hundreds of lives as worthless at the stroke of a pen to save 3 cents per sock is the solution to humanities problems then we all get what we deserve.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'C')apitalists are powerless before them, they must accept their every caprice.

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'C')apitalists are powerless before them, they must accept their every caprice.

[Z]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'I')ncreasing profits and reducing price are one and the same. I've already proven that.

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Z', 'A') lie again. You didn't prove anything. You just made statements that have no basis in reality. And you ran away when you were challenged.

If this was real, every margin of every good sold would be razor sharp. It is obviously NOT the case.

[Z]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'I')'ve provided a mathematical proof. Either attack the proof or deny mathematics as valid knowledge.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '
')All that matters to the consumers is their own bottom line, and that's how they get what they want from the capitalists. The capitalists are forced to obey them.

[CrudeAwakening]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', ' ')The executives only carry out the will of the consumers. They have no more power than what the consumers allow them. If the consumers no longer pay for expensive socks, the executives no longer have the money to pay the workers who make them. It is ultimately consumers who make all the decisions. Capitalists are powerless before them, they must accept their every caprice.

[Concerned]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Macsporan', '"')I must" must I? Well I don't think I will. I do not think any argument I could advance will have any effect on your lack of realism and immovable bigotry. If you want the truth read some history. If you don’t want to then you obviously don’t care about truth. Do it yourself. I’m not your free history tutor.

Nor do I have the time and leisure to solve all the world's problems in detail in order to amuse you.

In any case, because you don't actually read my posts, indeed you seem deaf to everything except the sound of your own voice; you probably didn't notice that I am not advocating Socialism.

I am advocating a Mixed Economy with Private Enterprise regulated by international conventions to ensure that capital flows within and between nations are invested in the public interest, not irresponsible speculation, and the provision of State Welfare to take the edge off the instability and inequity of the Capitalist System. This was, and in some place still is, the most successful socio-economic arrangement ever devised. Of that there can be no argument.

I have already stated at some length what I propose. I see no reason to repeat myself to someone who is determined to see no evil in modern or historic Capitalism.

I will however with pleasure demolish some of your more outrageous and silly claims for the interest and benefit of those who might be following our correspondence.

“Inform yourself better before launching accusations at people. Especially when your entire worldview is based on the demonization of a group of people whose only crime has been the advocacy of peace and liberty for all.”

What they actually advocate is corporate oligopoly and low-wage slavery. They don’t and never have given a damn about anyone’s freedom except their own freedom to crush the worker and swindle the consumer. There is a world-full of evidence for this, including many smug, gloating pronouncements of the people who are actually doing this.

”Here's some cold hard truth. In socialism, or social democracy, you aren't in charge.”

What on earth are you talking about? You’re completely out of touch; intoxicated by your own fanatical beliefs. You seem to have a default setting that everyone in the world is a healthy, white, middle-class Western male of independent means. Is a worker in some sweatshop on Haiti or Shanghai “in charge”. In charge of what? Their own lives, pay, working conditions? The poor are not free. Capitalism in the modern world isn’t some anarcho-syndicalist democracy, but a vicious dominion by huge corporations aptly named by Chomsky as “private tyrannies”, the feudal lords of the age.

In some ways they are worse. At least old-style feudal lords guaranteed their serfs a livelihood and were at least in part motivated by noblesse oblige. These days the corporate serfs can be sacked into starvation at the whim of a callous boss. Or beaten up, killed or sexually harassed. Is there anything in your precious economics that forbids such behaviour? No. The bottom line is all that counts.

“Liberalism makes you a free man, free to live your life however you will.”

See above. This is a theoretical construct only. In practice the poor are not free.

“In their mind that isn't right. In their mind you should dedicate yourself to the community, or the state, or to the glorious struggle to build the thousand year Reich.”

What, you think I’ve been listening to one of those legendary “outside agitators” that loom so large in bourgeoisie ideology?

Don’t make me laugh. I came to my own conclusions through my own learning which is both broader and deeper than yours. Yes, I do think we should struggle for the community and empower the state to deliver us from the heartless tyranny of Capitalist corporations.

Just in case you didn’t know, Nazi Germany was a Capitalist operation with a government of vicious, incompetent criminals, rather like the US today. The big capitalist combines had no trouble whatever in co-operating with their new masters.

Is there anything within Capitalist or economic theory that forbids such cooperation? No. All that matters is the bottom line and preserving their own wealth and power. That’s what China is about today. Pack rape: the State holds the people down and the Corporations do the raping. Funny, seems to happen just about everywhere, these days, and I don’t here economists weeping and wringing their hands about it.

“They don't care what your opinion of what is fair is.”

You’re talking about your own side here. Capitalism and economics exist in a moral vacuum. The only value is money, the only virtue is power.

“That is why socialist regimes always devolve into dictorial states. There is simply no other way to impose order in them.”

Name one Advanced Industrial Democratic Mixed Economy where this actually happened.

On second thoughts, don’t bother. I know a lot more about history and I can tell you there isn’t one.

The closest we’ve come to such an ugly transformation is the US and the UK today where regimes advocating bare-knuckle Capitalism and Corporate Welfare are using the poor excuse of Terrorism to curtail civil rights. Once again, you’re talking about your own side.

“What the hell? Did you know there is a popular saying, 'the oldest job in the world'? All these things you blame on capitalism EXISTED LONG BEFORE. They are not the fault of capitalism.”

I presume you are referring to prostitution here, “the oldest profession.” No, if you look closely you will see I made no such claim. What I am blaming Capitalism for is failing to provide sufficient, steady jobs so that women didn’t have to resort to this disgusting and degrading practice. There were about half a million full or part-time prostitutes in London alone throughout the 19th Century due to the inefficiencies and injustices and chronic failures of the Capitalist system. It would be the same today were it not for Social Welfare, which you would no doubt preach against all day and all night if anyone were inclined to listen.

“Do not believe the lies you have been fed by your socialist masters. They distort history just as they distort economic science to impose their will on you.”

I don’t have any socialist masters. I wish I did. They might pay me by the hour for arguing with a cloth-eared fool. I do this out of charity and love of truth, motivations that are perhaps mysterious to you.

Economics is no science. It has no experimental and deductive foundation. It is a fundamentalist dogmatic religion, (and a pretty poor one at that, having no rigorous Creation Myth, Moral Philosophy, Theodicy, Eschatology among many other things we usually expect of our religions), the last, and one of the most pernicious, to dominate the mind of Western Man.

“That may be how you feel, that is not how people do. The amount of charity and care given by free people in a free market system exceeds anything possible in any socialist system this world has ever seen.”

This is actually untrue, but I won’t go into detail because I am not arguing for a purely socialist system, as you are arguing for a purely capitalist one.

“The bottom line is that capitalists are more altruistic than anyone else in history because capitalism gave them the material means to be altruistic.”

Really? Tell me about the Irish Potato Famine, prostitution in 19th Century England, homelessness in the contemporary USA. Were Capitalists as altruistic as you assert these social catastrophes would not, could not have occurred. Welfare States emerged because private capitalist charity utterly failed to alleviate the inequities and inefficiencies of capitalist society.

“The international red cross is a capitalist organization”

No, it is a charitable organisation. Its primary function is not to make money for its shareholders, but to relieve misery and want caused by disaster. There is nothing in the theory of capitalism as preached by economists that enjoins acts of charity, and consequently they are not common on a scale enough to make any difference.

“Capitalists are just people, with all their flaws and all the virtues of human nature. To condemn capitalism is to condemn human nature, brotherhood, society and family.”

You have not established any necessary connection between Capitalism and Human Nature. In fact Capitalism is a very limited and limiting dogma that has nothing to say about at best, but is usually contemptuous of, whole sectors of the Human experience: such as brotherhood, society and family. Capitalism degrades brotherhood and tries to destroy it: it’s called Union Busting. The most infamous pundit proclaimed society does not exist. Capitalism devours larger and larger sections of the lives of its serfs as working-hours balloon, wrecking family life. Again, all that matters is the bottom line.

“You cannot wish scarcity away. It is a fundamental fact of existence. The poor may have little money but their money still commands the will of the producers.”

Scarcity is found most prominently among the poor, a fact which Capitalism does not offer any solution. A person without money does not exist on the Capitalist radar. It does not promise and end to social and economic inequality, in fact it glories in it as the engine of progress. Again if you are a healthy middle-class white Western male this is well and good, but since 98% of the world are not, as a solution to the world’s problems it is entirely nugatory, unless it is subject to State regulation and the vigilance of a strong Labour Unions.

“No one turns down money. Walmart is an enterprise constructed entirely for the purpose of lowering prices on every day consumer goods. Walmart improved the lot of the poor more than any socialist or union group ever could.”

Walmart was created to give a huge surplus to give its executives and shareholders by viciously exploiting its employees and contractors both in the Third World and the US. By decimating the US petty-bourgeoisie it has wrecked what little remained of the social cohesion of that unfortunate country. There is less and less between the Corporate Feudal aristocracy and a mass of exploited serfs.

Your claims are utterly ludicrous. Unions improve pay, job security and working conditions. Walmart, and their fellow capitalist pirates, do the opposite.

“If you were really so righteous you would be building houses for the poor or giving away free breakfast and lunch for poor kids. Instead you complain about capitalism on the internet and how it isn't fair that some people are poor regardless of whether or not it is the result of capitalism.”

My own efforts, like yours, would make little difference in the greater scheme of things. Redistributive taxation policies and systematic social welfare would. This is why I advocate them.

“People are even poorer in countries which adopted socialism.”

If you are talking about Sweden I have to disagree, the sort of Mixed Economy Social Democracy that I’m actually advocating. The poor in the US would regard the lives of the Swedish poor with envy.

”The truth, the only truth that matters, is that every argument you've made has been an argument AGAINST liberalism.”

What I have done is demonstrate, beyond any doubt, that laissez-faire Capitalism is a monstrously unjust, degraded and exploitative system, which although possessing some animal virtues, does not and never will live up to the grandiose, fantastic and utopian claims its besotted admirers, such as yourself, make for it.

“You have not made a single argument IN FAVOR of any other system, or demonstrated why this system would be a better state of affair.”

I actually have. Perhaps you don’t have the wit to understand what I’m talking about.

“You haven't because it is not possible. Liberalism is the only system of social cooperation which is acceptable by modern standards.”

“There is no alterative!” Thank you Baroness Thatcher. Cute dress. However there is and was an alternative, Mixed Economy, Social Welfare Democracy.

“Everything else devolves into slavery, or back to abject poverty, or both.”

I have already refuted this bizarre, nonsensical assertion.

“You must abandon all your delusions, you must face reality.”

Perhaps you could do the same. I have listed a number of your delusions and they are far more destructive than mine.

“Scarcity cannot be willed away. Inequality cannot be willed away.”

Scarcity can be significantly alleviated with money and redistributive taxation and social programs. Inequality ditto.

“They must be accepted and embraced.”

I do not share you heartless imperatives. I will no more do this than I will accept rape, torture, murder or any other form of injustice and cruelty.

“And a system that accept them as fact must be used for the improvement of the life of all.”

It doesn’t happen. It’s never happened. The system is actually designed for and by people who want to prevent this. They actually want to improve life for themselves and use all other people as instruments for their corrupt ambition.

“That is only possible through capitalism.”

What a joke!

The systematic large-scale doing of evil cannot lead to the systematic, large scale triumph of good.

[jaws]

Macsporan you continue to disappoint me and your cause. By not revealing the specific policies that you support you simply expose yourself as a verbose man with no insight into the functions of society. Your statements are completely empty. You repeat over and over how you stand for GOOD and against BAD. Well duh. So do I, and so does everyone else. The difference between you and me is that I can always explain how my stance achieves good. You cannot, and that is why you refuse to accept my challenge.

Let's just start with the simplest exercise we can find. How would you end child prostitution and general child exploitation? It seems to be a topic you take particular interest in, you must have some sort of plan.

[Concerned]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'M')acsporan you continue to disappoint me and your cause. By not revealing the specific policies that you support you simply expose yourself as a verbose man with no insight into the functions of society. Your statements are completely empty. You repeat over and over how you stand for GOOD and against BAD. Well duh. So do I, and so does everyone else. The difference between you and me is that I can always explain how my stance achieves good. You cannot, and that is why you refuse to accept my challenge.

Let's just start with the simplest exercise we can find. How would you end child prostitution and general child exploitation? It seems to be a topic you take particular interest in, you must have some sort of plan.

[cheRand]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') am advocating a Mixed Economy with Private Enterprise regulated by international conventions to ensure that capital flows within and between nations are invested in the public interest, not irresponsible speculation, and the provision of State Welfare to take the edge off the instability and inequity of the Capitalist System. This was, and in some place still is, the most successful socio-economic arrangement ever devised. Of that there can be no argument.

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Concerned', '
')LOL Jaws you're a classic. I think it's time for you to expand your knowledge beyond your current views.

http://www.mises.org/ has some useful insiights into how a pure capatilist economy "should work" but the problem with theory and the real world where the rubber hits the road.

Debunking Economics
http://www.debunking-economics.com/
Progress and Poverty
http://www.henrygeorge.org/chp1.htm
Economic Democracy
http://www.ied.info

I believe there is no "one size fits all" solution, for any nation on earth. I do not believe pure capatilism has ever or will ever exist. I think a solution lies somewhere in a mixed economy with elements of capatilism and socalism.

It worked well for America and Europe, free enterprise with strong social contracts.

[JustinFrankl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'T')he first thing that the Austrian school asserts is that there is no such thing as a perfect economic system because the economic system centers on man and man is flawed.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JustinFrankl', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Concerned', 'T')he first thing that the Austrian school asserts is that there is no such thing as a perfect economic system because the economic system centers on man and man is flawed.