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I'm all for capitalism, with the proviso, that there be controls, but where are the controls?
You earn your first million, it's time for you to bow out! Let someone else come in and earn the next million, then they bow out! And spend the rest of your carefree days as volunteers!
In Las Vegas, there's Title Loan places everywhere. Controls where art thou?
And there's many other controls that could be put in place to make capitalism more applaudable!
Where's the problem? Cat got your tongue? Go ahead and regale us with knee-jerk propaganda tales about Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot. So deep!
Meanwhile, what has achieved success and at times actually been able to sustain it has been managed capitalism. Other flavors such as free-market capitalism have been abject failures wherever and whenever they have been tried. Live and learn!
Phew, you are all over the place, what explanation do you need again?
Capitalism is the result of a culture that values material things, and evolved a way of life that requires money in order to function.
This is an incomplete definition.
It also values the idea that when you work the fruits of your labor are yours ( after taxes ). There isn't some government entity looking at your life and deciding that "a lot" ( for varying degrees of "lot" ) of what you produced would be better "utilized" if "they" utilized them ( redistributed them ).
This was the life of people all the way into the industrial revolution and under communism. Capitalism has enabled people to have, yes, material things, like clothes and a bed and a home and a bike or car and other material things that make our lifestyle something that could only be dreamed about by even the ruling class of just a couple centuries ago.
Trying to claim that the miserable material life of the people of Bhutan is something that we need to emulate is just nuts. No matter how small the country is, re-distributing stuff from the top causes people to NOT create wealth.
They are never going to have a decent material life without emulating the American/European model.
Great evidence of this is to look at the material life of places like Japan, Korea, and Taiwan who's living standards are far superior to the technologically-advance Soviet Union. Former client states such as Poland and the Balkans, et al are far better off just a generation away from the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Unless you live in a dirt shack and wash your clothes by hand and only eat what you grow, dissing "material things" rings pretty hollow. Material things are good, everybody likes them, some people go overboard with them, but overall, they are good, important, and necessary.
I'd rather opt-out, but I believe that it HAS to exist because some, maybe most people are simply too stupid to provide for their own retirement.
That attitude boils my blood and makes it impossible to have a discussion with you. You think you win at capitalism because you have money in the bank? Do you want to know how fast the capitalist American medical system will bleed you dry if you get sick? But I suppose you think only stupid people suffer from ill health and accidents.
It also values the idea that when you work the fruits of your labor are yours ( after taxes ). There isn't some government entity looking at your life and deciding that "a lot" ( for varying degrees of "lot" ) of what you produced would be better "utilized" if "they" utilized them ( redistributed them ).
This was the life of people all the way into the industrial revolution and under communism. Capitalism has enabled people to have, yes, material things, like clothes and a bed and a home and a bike or car and other material things that make our lifestyle something that could only be dreamed about by even the ruling class of just a couple centuries ago.
Trying to claim that the miserable material life of the people of Bhutan is something that we need to emulate is just nuts. No matter how small the country is, re-distributing stuff from the top causes people to NOT create wealth.
They are never going to have a decent material life without emulating the American/European model.
Great evidence of this is to look at the material life of places like Japan, Korea, and Taiwan who's living standards are far superior to the technologically-advance Soviet Union. Former client states such as Poland and the Balkans, et al are far better off just a generation away from the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Unless you live in a dirt shack and wash your clothes by hand and only eat what you grow, dissing "material things" rings pretty hollow. Material things are good, everybody likes them, some people go overboard with them, but overall, they are good, important, and necessary.
I'm all for capitalism, with the proviso, that there be controls, but where are the controls?
You earn your first million, it's time for you to bow out! Let someone else come in and earn the next million, then they bow out! And spend the rest of your carefree days as volunteers!
In Las Vegas, there's Title Loan places everywhere. Controls where art thou?
And there's many other controls that could be put in place to make capitalism more applaudable!
In your world we might never have cars, planes, internet, etc.
Can you provide examples? There have been parts of the US economy that have been like that, but well over 100 years ago, socialist policies were applied....
The Progressive Era flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The final collapse of global capitalism came a bit after that, with some countries moving to the right and some to the left, but everyone recognizing that the capitalist system as it had been defined was a failure to be abandoned. It still is just that. For the latest iterative example of failure in the US, see the fallout from silly revival of a belief that "markets are wise enough to regulate themselves" from barely a decade ago.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IDtheftV
A good example is the Social Security system.
And that was such a bad characterization of SS that I will not deign to have it repeated under my handle. To put the matter briefly, SS is the most popular and successful social insurance plan in the history of the world.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IDtheftV
I have a relative who...
Nobody cares one whit about any of your relatives or any of mine. Credible people understand that personal anecdotes are not valid evidence of anything at all.
[Capitlaism] also values the idea that when you work the fruits of your labor are yours ( after taxes ). There isn't some government entity looking at your life and deciding that "a lot" ( for varying degrees of "lot" ) of what you produced would be better "utilized" if "they" utilized them ( redistributed them ).
The second sentence is quite the contradiction of the first. You also need to distinguish between "capital" (utilized in virtually every economic system) and "Capitalism," a narrow, twisted, and failed economic system that essentially worships capital above all else.
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