Radical politics?

[Valamir]

At the same time, I might question the necessity and wisdom of $58 million processing plants, though. But again, that's not a "capitalism vs. centralized control" debate.

True not a capitalism vs central control issue per se.  But it is the $58 million processing plant that allows you to buy a $20 pair of mass produced jeans rather than the $200 tailor made pair.  That allows people in all social strata the ability to have wardrobes that consist of more then 2 pair of pants and 3 shirts...a condition that wasn't common except among the well to do pre industrial era.

Capitalism enters into the picture in deciding WHAT the $58 million plant should produce.  If enough people want jeans, the factory will make jeans.  

Centralized Control means the factory might produce plaid corderoys or farm equipment...even if most people don't want plaid corderoys or farm equipment.

[GreatWolf]

Capitalism enters into the picture in deciding WHAT the $58 million plant should produce. If enough people want jeans, the factory will make jeans.

Centralized Control means the factory might produce plaid corderoys or farm equipment...even if most people don't want plaid corderoys or farm equipment.

Oh, definitely, and I'm not arguing that at all.

However, as I take a look at some of the social costs of industrialization, I begin to wonder if our fathers made the right choices.  Is the fragmentation of our society that was a result of the Industrial Revolution really a reasonable cost for cheap pants?

Now, to be clear, this is not an anti-tech rant.  In some ways, the improved technology that we have can better enable us to pursue a free-market, decentralized, local economy, since high tech (especially computers) can act as a "force multiplier" for labor (if you'll permit the mixing of metaphors).  The ministry where I work can really only exist because we ride the cutting edge of technology, which allows our labor cost to be kept low.

So, I guess what I'm suggesting is that, as we consider where we go from here, that the best idea is to take that which we have learned and built with industrialization and return our focus to the local level.  For example, I think that we should pursue small business vs. large corporations, not because large corporations are inherently evil, but because there are positive economic and social consequences for a strong small business sector.

Now, how do we get to this point?  Simple.  Capitalism.  :-)  For example, patronize the small business that still caters to your needs.  This is why I buy my boardgames from Aubogames (www.aubogames.com) instead of Funagain.com, and I only purchase from Jim after I knew that local game businesses didn't have what I wanted.  (Besides, I'm not persuaded that I really want to suffer the smoke of the Game Room to get my games.  You know what I'm talking about, Ralph.)

Socialism isn't the answer.  Wise use of capital is the answer.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

[Christopher Weeks]

Ralph, thanks for the time you just gave us.

I have a few quibbles which may or may not be Big Things:

capitalism is nothing more than a system that takes capital and distributes it to where it is most efficiently put to use

In your meaning, I take efficiency to be the rate of production of new wealth as predicted by the individuals involved in the transaction.  Is that fair?

In a Socialist system, the government simply takes the capital you have away from you and gives it to some one else

Many socialists question the notion that said capital was actually "yours."  That is, you generated capital through the use of public infrastructure, and as such the wealth that you generate is public wealth.  So I think they'd describe it differently.

Simple. The businesses compete for the capital. The one that offers more profit to you is the one that you give your money to.

This is where efficiency is being guessed at.  I assume that when you make the loan to the guy offering the higher return and he goes out of business, that's not an example of maximal efficiency, right?  If there were some magical way of determining ahead of time what will succeed (I'm not suggesting such a thing exists without fail), then you could distribute the capital with maximum efficiency.  Right?

What this means is there is now more capital in the society at the end of this deal, then there is at the beginning. Society as a whole is wealthier. That's the efficiency of capitalism. By uplifting the total wealth available to a society, you uplift more members of that society

That's bad logic.  I'd buy the mean wealth per member of society has risen, but that doesn't say anything about the actual number of members affected.  In a society of ten people, two businessmen and eight layabouts, if the two businessmen keep shifting capital to one another's innovative projects and the other eight simply languish, fewer people are helped than would have happened under a communitarian system.  Right?  Again, I'm not even stating that's a reasonable analogy to reality (at least not yet, I don't know if I'd take it that way eventually), just that that is how the logic can play out.

As soon as you put in limitations on the free flow of capital, you automatically by definition MUST wind up with a less efficient system.

Except for the above noted exceptions.

Society is now automatically worse off. There is now less wealth in the system then there could have been because you (i.e. some government agency) interfered with where that money is going and routed it to a less efficient use.

Except that "worse off" is wildly up for definition.  Even if I grant that less wealth overall exists, I might think that having no people starving and thus violent, is actually more important to the "worse off" metric.  There are other problems with capitalism leading to "better off" that stem from short-sightedness.  The upper management of companies seem to often be more concerned about short-term shareholder value gains than sustainable success.  I think this clearly, at least sometimes, decreases the accumulation of overall wealth over time.  Right?

Thing is, it doesn't work that way. YES in the short term you did just help out that 1 individual business and his family and employees more than if you'd let money flow freely. But that act, repeated often and consistantly over and over means that a generation down the road the standard of living for the average person is going to be lower than it could have been.

I see the same logical fallacy.  You are misrepresenting averages.  Even if the total wealth divided by the population is lower, that does absolutely, positively NOT mean that "the standard of living for the average person is...lower."

...this is where charitable giving and volunteer work have to pick up the slack...BUT, before you start to think "wouldn't it be nice if the government just took care of these things so that charity wouldn't be necessary" its important to not that when the government does that the overall level of prosperity for the whole society declines

Now wait a minute!  If the capital is distributed to these less efficient causes by charitable donation, the overall level of prosperity doesn't decline, but when done by government it does?  That can't be if the very reason for the decline in total wealth is the minimization of efficiency.  It's the same!

No other system in history has been able to do a better job than this

Better at maximizing efficiency as we've defined it, right?  The ancient Hopi seem to have run a thriving communal civilization, but of course their economic instruments and accomplishments were much less sophisticated.  I think Cuba, with all of Castro's faults, is the shining star of modern communist success, but that might be because it's small.  There is still a part elite that lives luxuriously on the backs of the rest of the populace, and that has to go, but lots of Cubans are pretty happy getting unlimited free education, whatever healthcare that their system can provide for free (with many, many doctors and very little material), and an obligation of only a few hours of work each week.  How much better would they be doing if we hadn't been fucking them up the ass for forty years?

Chris

[clehrich]

I believe in taxing the bejeezus out of the rich.  If you have an income of $500,000 a year, by any means at all, you should pony up 60% of it.  Once that's set as a baseline, stagger it right the way down so that poor couples making minimum wage can have one spouse stay home with a kid if he or she wants to.  Otherwise child care is a tax on the poor.

I believe in taxing any motor vehicle that is not used for proven and justified business use, scaled by cost and fuel-efficiency.  If you can afford a $60,000 SUV, you can afford another $10,000 in taxes.  If you buy a super-efficient car under $20,000, you should be able to ride home in style.

I believe that the separation of church and state, while a noble goal, is fundamentally impossible.  I would like to enforce it, however, by making all political rhetoric about religion flatly illegal.  No more "faith-based" bullshit.  If you can't justify it without reference to the Bible, you shouldn't be able to legislate for it.  Period.

I believe that Amnesty International should be backed by the world court with the power to levy major sanctions against criminal nations.  For example, the three remaining countries that permit the application of the death penalty to children should be put under radical and even intolerable sanctions until they stop it.  Incidentally, we're one of those three.  And no, Iran isn't.

I believe that the death penalty is a disgusting holdover that has long since been abolished by right-thinking nations.

I believe that sexual contact of any kind between consenting adults of any number and sex is nobody's business but theirs.  I will make some exceptions for doing it in public.

I believe, with Clinton Nixon, that the government has no business officiating at marriages, which are a fundamentally religious institution the way this culture thinks of them.  Either (1) make marriage entirely a civil matter, in which case there is no justification for limitations of race, creed, color, or sex; or (2) make marriage officially a religious matter, as in fact it currently is, and have the state only issue civil unions -- equally not limited by race, creed, color, or sex.  Every argument I have heard about why marriage should be heterosexual comes down to (a) because my religion says it's bad, or (b) because that's not how it's been used legally in the past.  The former is unconstitutional; the latter is irrelevant.

I believe that it's about fucking time somebody actually decided to put 2 and 2 together and realize that education in this country sucks because the teachers are really badly paid and overworked, and thus there is no incentive for talented people to go into it.  And don't tell me college profs don't spend a lot of time in the classroom, either, because they don't get paid to teach -- it's the ugly truth, folks -- and they generally work around 60 hours a week for under 50k.  High school and elementary teachers are these days paid about equally, which is good, but have longer class hours and more students than they can possibly handle.  Try this on for size: the average salary of a corporate receptionist after 5 years' experience is slightly higher than that of a high school teacher after equal experience.  Fuck the rich and pay for schools.  And if you don't like the schools, pay more for them, don't just weasel your kids out of them and blame the minorities you don't like.

I believe that affirmative action is a wonderful idea hamstrung by a total unwillingness, by everyone involved at every level, to follow through.  If you admit an underqualified because underprivileged student, you must follow up and make up for lost time.  If you don't, you just defer the problem.

I believe that education based on "self-esteem" is despicable unless you actually give the kids something to feel good about.  I am tired of having to break students of the idea that their total ignorance is justified by their "personal style."

I believe that the press should stop claiming objectivity.  It just allows the shitheads to claim to be objective and tell lies.  Viz. Fox News.

I believe that the slander and libel laws should be loosened, so that we could prosecute Rush Limbaugh and the like for spreading poison.

I believe that politicians who lie about legislation or policy should be forced to pay for their crimes through public admission and large sums of money.  So for example, Rumsfeld's public lies about how he never said that there was an imminent threat -- something he is on tape saying -- should cost him about $10,000 right now, cash on the barrelhead, and all the newspapers cover it publicly.

And that's just a start.  As George Carlin said, "I don't have dislikes.  I have psychotic fucking hatreds."

[Valamir]

In your meaning, I take efficiency to be the rate of production of new wealth as predicted by the individuals involved in the transaction.  Is that fair?

I don't know that you'd get full marks for that answer in an economics class, but I think its good enough for our purpose.

Many socialists question the notion that said capital was actually "yours."  That is, you generated capital through the use of public infrastructure, and as such the wealth that you generate is public wealth.  So I think they'd describe it differently.

Perhaps.  I'd describe it as an attempt to justify the belief that they think they know better than you where your money should be spent.  After all the public infrastructure was bought with tax money.  You paid tax money.  Ergo, I'd say you're entitled to the use of that infrastructure.

If we accept that the reason we want governments to build infrastructure is to enhance the prosperity of society; then it doesn't make much logical sense to then penalize the people who are using the infrastructure to enhance the prosperity of society.

This is where efficiency is being guessed at.  I assume that when you make the loan to the guy offering the higher return and he goes out of business, that's not an example of maximal efficiency, right?  If there were some magical way of determining ahead of time what will succeed (I'm not suggesting such a thing exists without fail), then you could distribute the capital with maximum efficiency.  Right?

This is getting into very complex territory.  Keeping it simple, this is why above I pointed out the option between putting your money in a bank and letting the bank assume this risk, vs assuming the risk directly yourself.

You are absolutely right that there is risk.  That's why its necessary to have people who are willing to take that risk to make this happen.  That's why the people who are willing to take the risk are rewarded more if it works, where as people who don't take the risk are rewarded less.   Its choice.  How much risk are you a holder of capital willing to accept.  

Where this gets complicated is that there is a whole realm of hedging and speculation that is involved in this.  One of the key functions of the distribution of capital is that you need a system where people who don't want to take the risk can transfer that risk (and potential reward) to people who are willing to take the risk (for the potential reward).

You'll hear alot of people saying that speculation is bad and shouldn't be allowed.  This couldn't be farther from the truth.  The only way that person A can achieve greater saftey is if they have the ability to transfer their risk to someone who is willing to accept it.  That someone is the speculator.  They are a vital and necessary component.  

Some may say that they make obscenely high profits.  On occassion they do (on others they crash and burn).  But that's not because they stole those profits.  Its because someone else was willing to give them those profits in exchange for reducing their own chance to crash and burn.  Both sides make out.

There is no "magical" way of determining ahead of time, you are quite right.  But there are very elaborate (but conceptually simple) mechanisms (futures and forward markets play a big role) where this is worked out.  In the aggregate it becomes an actuarial exercise in balancing out the number of times you're likely to get paid back with the number of times you're likely to be defaulted on and calculating how much profit you need to make on the times you get paid back to compensate for the defaults.

Its this sort of analysis that makes investing in "junk bonds" suitable for some investors while other investors are better off sticking with treasuries.  Again.  Its having that choice that makes it work.

That's bad logic.  I'd buy the mean wealth per member of society has risen, but that doesn't say anything about the actual number of members affected.  In a society of ten people, two businessmen and eight layabouts, if the two businessmen keep shifting capital to one another's innovative projects and the other eight simply languish, fewer people are helped than would have happened under a communitarian system.  Right?  Again, I'm not even stating that's a reasonable analogy to reality (at least not yet, I don't know if I'd take it that way eventually), just that that is how the logic can play out.

As I noted below, there is a weakness to capitalism that some people do get left behind.  That's where you need charitable programs to pick up the slack.  But society as a whole is better off with losing some value due to charitable giving, than losing alot of value by creating a situation where charity isn't necessary.

Remember, as those businessmen prosper they will expand.  They will need more labor.  As labor becomes scarce they will need to offer higher wages to attract it.  As those businessmen take their accumulated wealth and buy luxury cars they are supporting the guy who sells the luxury cars, the guy who owns the property the luxury car dealership is on, the company that makes the luxury cars and the guy on the assembly line who gets paid for building the luxury cars.  

Unlike Mercantilism, wealth in a capitalist system is not a stagnant thing.  In constantly cycles as it is spent, recieved and spent again.  But inorder for this cycle to work you have to have goods and services that are readily available for the money to be spent on.

So its not as simple as saying group A makes money, group B doesn't.  Typically Group B also benefits when Group A makes money.  Its a multiplicitive effect.

Except that "worse off" is wildly up for definition.  Even if I grant that less wealth overall exists, I might think that having no people starving and thus violent, is actually more important to the "worse off" metric.  

Quite.  That's where the trade offs come in that I mention below.  

The problem is that you wind up in a negative spiral if you go to far.  If the act of having no one starve slows the accumulation of wealth in the society to the point where you now have more people starving you wind up with a situation where the standard of living is declining faster than government shuffling can keep up.

You wind up robbing Peter to pay Paul which is fine.  Right up to the point where you start running out of Peters and still have more Pauls.  Then you wind up with a completely broken economy which ultimately has more starving Pauls than when you started.

So its a balancing act.  One side argues for more aid to Paul, and the other side warns of the dangers of taking too much from Peter and somewhere in the middle they compromise.  Its a compromise that still leaves some Pauls needing help, but helps prevent self destructing the system and winding up not being able to help any Pauls (and creating alot more Pauls in the process)

Ask youself the following question.  Is the average lower class citizen in America today better or worse off than the Average lower class citizen at the time of the French Revolution.  Or during the Victorian era.

The average lower class citizen may be less well off than the average middle class citizen (by definition) but clearly they are much better off than their counter parts from earlier periods:  food, shelter, clothing, entertainment.  Capitalism doesn't make everyone rich.  But it does make most everyone better off then they would have been without it.

There are other problems with capitalism leading to "better off" that stem from short-sightedness.  The upper management of companies seem to often be more concerned about short-term shareholder value gains than sustainable success.  I think this clearly, at least sometimes, decreases the accumulation of overall wealth over time.  Right?

Right..BUT.  This does not say anything again capitalism as a system.  In fact this situation is created by attempting to REGULATE Capitalism.  By passing laws that give benefits for X behavior the government focuses corporate management on doing X behavior.  Even when X behavior might be contrary to the long term wealth creation of society.  That's an oversimplification I admit for space reasons.  But most of the "broken" parts in corporate America (and there are many) come from poorly implemented regulations and not inherent weaknesses in Capitalism.

I see the same logical fallacy.  You are misrepresenting averages.  Even if the total wealth divided by the population is lower, that does absolutely, positively NOT mean that "the standard of living for the average person is...lower."

Unfortuneately it does lead to that.  Mathematically you are right.  But reality is far more complex than that.  There needs to be concentrations of wealth for capitalism to function.  Capitalism requires capital to be available to transfer throughout the economy.

Consider a simple society with $10 million and 100 people.

If you have 5 people living in $500,000 homes and 95 people living in $35,000 homes you've got $5,825,000 tied up in illiquid homes.  The remaining $4,175,000 is liquid and able to be cycled through the economy.

Government passes a law that says everyone is entitled to nice housing.  

So now you have 100 people living in $75,000 homes.  Sounds great right, the majority are living in much nicer homes than they were and those capitalist dogs are taken out of their mansions and forced to live like everyone else.

Except when you deconcentrate wealth like this you have more of it tied up in illiquid assets.  There is now only $2,500,000 liquid flowing through the economy.  This is a liquidity crunch.

You have a lot of businesses that can't expand as much as they would want to (opportunity for increasing societies wealth lost).  Interest rates sky rocket as businesses compete for scarce dollars.  You have rampant deflation where goods lose value causing businesses to collapse leading to unemployment, etc. etc. etc.

Please recognize this is a severe oversimplification, but liquidity is one of the most important factors of a functioning economy and the more you spread capital out the less liquid you are.  

As another example.  If you needed to borrow $10 is it easier to find 1 friend willing to lend you $10.  Or 20 friends willing to lend you 50 cents each.  Its much easier when wealth is concentrated enough so that 1 of your friends has a spare $10.  Its much harder to get the $10 if the most extra cash any of your friends has is 50 cents each.

Now wait a minute!  If the capital is distributed to these less efficient causes by charitable donation, the overall level of prosperity doesn't decline, but when done by government it does?  That can't be if the very reason for the decline in total wealth is the minimization of efficiency.  It's the same!

But its not.  Again, pretty complicated.  But consider this.

You have $100.  You want to give $20 to charity.  You give the money to charity and then put the remaining $80 in the back and get a 10% return.  You now have $88.

or

You have $100.  You want to give $20 to charity.  You put the $100 in the bank and get a 10% return.  You now have $110.  You then give $20 to charity.  You are left with $90.


Really simplistic illustration, but the difference mainly involves the difference between taking the money out of the economy before its had a chance to generate wealth for society or after.  

Its the difference between government taxes being involuntary and charitable giving being voluntary.

Its the difference between a government run program where efficiency and effectiveness is poor, and a privately run charity where efficiency is high because the charity needs to compete for your dollar.

Its the difference between allowing the holders of capital to decide for themselves if and when they can afford to donate to charity and which causes seem most worthy to them, vs. having someone else make the choice for you.

Its not the same at all.

Better at maximizing efficiency as we've defined it, right?  The ancient Hopi seem to have run a thriving communal civilization, but of course their economic instruments and accomplishments were much less sophisticated.  I think Cuba, with all of Castro's faults, is the shining star of modern communist success, but that might be because it's small.  There is still a part elite that lives luxuriously on the backs of the rest of the populace, and that has to go, but lots of Cubans are pretty happy getting unlimited free education, whatever healthcare that their system can provide for free (with many, many doctors and very little material), and an obligation of only a few hours of work each week.  How much better would they be doing if we hadn't been fucking them up the ass for forty years?

There are people in Cuba so desperate to get out they make boats out converted automobiles and try to drive to Floriday in them.  Cuba is certainly a shining star compared to say...Haiti.  But I've not seen any numbers to support the notion that the standard of living of the average Cuban in Havana is higher than that of the average Cuban in Miami.

[quozl]

Ralph, thanks for the time you just gave us.

Christopher, if you have more time and are interested in this sort of thing, read The Wealth of Nations if you haven't already.  It is an amazing book (which is still required reading in most every college economics program) that is very pro-capitalism and very anti-government control.  While Adam Smith didn't know the complexities of the modern world, he sure knew his stuff 230 years ago.

[BPetroff93]

http://www.lp.org/

Based on a number of the posts on this thread I think some of you either are Lib or should be :)  Take some time and read some articles explaining why the party policies are the way they are.  You may learn some suprising things.

[Alan]

Christopher, if you have more time and are interested in this sort of thing, read The Wealth of Nations if you haven't already.  It... is very pro-capitalism and very anti-government control.

While I haven't read Adam Smith, I have read modern analyses which include quotes from him that make it pretty clear he opposed the sort of big corporation economy we have today.   I got the impression he would be appalled that we allow so much centralization of capital and so much monopoly.  He was not in favor of laisez faire capitalism as a general solution to every economic problem.

[Valamir]

Ralph, thanks for the time you just gave us.

Christopher, if you have more time and are interested in this sort of thing, read The Wealth of Nations if you haven't already.  It is an amazing book (which is still required reading in most every college economics program) that is very pro-capitalism and very anti-government control.  While Adam Smith didn't know the complexities of the modern world, he sure knew his stuff 230 years ago.

Damn, I meant to close with that very advice, good call.

That book is still the absolute best primer on the principles of capitalism there is (if a book some 4 inches thick can be considered a primer).  What makes it so effective is that it was written from the perspective of a guy writing to an audience that had zero comprehension of capitalism as a system and so pretty much every last detail is laid out very simply and completely.  

It also serves as a great crash course on Mercantilism since that was the "old school" mindset Smith was trying to convert to Narrativism...I mean Capitalism...

I find it especially fun, because my edition hasn't modernized the language (though it did modernize the spelling and punctuation thankfully) so its a truly joyous read of 18th century diction.

[Valamir]

http://www.lp.org/

Based on a number of the posts on this thread I think some of you either are Lib or should be :)  Take some time and read some articles explaining why the party policies are the way they are.  You may learn some suprising things.

Unfortuneatly the Libertarians are just as full of wacko extremist nut jobs as the Republicans and Democrats.

Just when you start to think "yeah, here's some folks talking sense" wham the lib equivelent of Pat Buchanan comes out and starts making a mockery of the whole party.

They pretty much all suck equally IMO.

[BPetroff93]

Not to shift the thread too much Ralph but what are you making that observation on?

[quozl]

He was not in favor of laisez faire capitalism as a general solution to every economic problem.

Actually, he pretty much was, at least according to The Wealth of Nations.

[greyorm]

THATs what Capitalism gives you people

It also provides class-based inequalities in society, and erodes democratic freedom because "money talks." The capitalist system lies about its benefits: hard-work does not equal anything, let alone success or survival. Sorry, it just doesn't. And I know you aren't making those arguments, but they are the most commonly used arguments by the average person. And keep in mind I'm not talking about socialist Russia or China, I'm talking about communism. There's a world of difference.

(BTW, don't get me started on the "you people" bit above...you definitely could have worded that far less offensively, Ralph)

That's the efficiency of capitalism. By uplifting the total wealth available to a society, you uplift more members of that society

Hey, look, trickle down economics.

YES in the short term you did just help out that 1 individual business and his family and employees more than if you'd let money flow freely. But that act, repeated often and consistantly over and over means that a generation down the road the standard of living for the average person is going to be lower than it could have been.

You are basically dooming all of society to a lower standard of living in order to selectively help certain individuals have a higher standard of living.

Once again, you argue that the ends justify the means.

That a little pain now for someone who isn't you is a good thing because nebulous currently non-existant future people will benefit. But wait, capitalism is about self-interest, you say...so why should I give a crap about future generations...or for that matter, anyone but myself, particularly if I'm poor and you're rich? After all, it isn't benefitting me, and can't, because I'm poor and the system can't (and isn't) do anything for me.

I have very personal reasons for hating the system. The current, modern "captialist system" has done precisely SQUAT for me and mine, exactly as you point out, and it's only through social welfare programs (derived from enforced taxation, which is the opposite of capitalist philosophy of personal control of assets, as you mention) that I, and many others, are hanging on and surviving.

Apparently, though, according to the theory, we're "not worth it" because we're mathematically problematic. Quite honestly, if you were to say that to my face I'd tell you to exactly what you could do with yourself.

Seriously, put some real faces on the theory for a couple of minutes, then defend it.

Capitalism simply doesn't reward or encourage humanitarianism, community, or social welfare, it encourages and rewards profits -- the bottom-line -- at all costs. In that fashion, it's a broken, selfish, system that only works to sustain itself rather than provide for all, or for the future.

Your argument puts the quality/value of a lifestyle for future generations ahead of real people, and says to those people, "too bad." Morally, I can't accept that -- once again, it is the noble ends by any means (in this case, on the backs of the poor).

Now, are there worthwhile positives to captialism? Yes, you've pointed some of them out. Does it work? Yeah, in a perfect world, it would, and the poor would just be faceless masses whose pain didn't matter as we climb our way to the top of the pile.

But don't go about with blinders on pretending that there aren't serious disadvantages in the system as well, or shrug and say "it's better than the alternative, so it's good enough."

Me...I'm not satisfied with "good enough" as long as suffering exists.

And (before anyone makes the argument) yes, suffering may always exist, but that doesn't mean you stop trying.

Give me "to each according to need, from each according to ability" any day. Yes, I'm aware that communism also only works in a perfect world, but capitalism doesn't meet my ethical standards for the reasons I've explained above, and in fact, offends them.

[quozl]

The current, modern "captialist system" has done precisely SQUAT for me and mine.

I know I've been harping on this book but Adam Smith explains why our current modern capitalism sucks so much and why pure capitalism doesn't in The Wealth of Nations.  Really, read it if you haven't already.

[BPetroff93]

Okay Rev. here goes...

First off if "money talks" that is the opposite of class system because class becomes irrelavent.  Second, I know a great many people who would disagree with the statement that hard work doesn't equal anything.   I appreciate that you have had your experience, but I have had mine and they are equally valid.

What Ralph is talking about is actually not trickle down economics.  Trickle down is raising the wealth of the already wealthy in the hopes that it will filter downwards.  Ralph is talking about all members of society benefiting from higher levels of wealth, in other words the "goal" of capitalism.

Capitalism is only "about self interest" in the sense that it assumes that all rational human beings are going to act in their own self interest.  This is not a statement about what we should do, but rather what we will do.  This is exactly the same thing you are doing:

have very personal reasons for hating the system. The current, modern "captialist system" has done precisely SQUAT for me and mine, exactly as you point out, and it's only through social welfare programs (derived from enforced taxation, which is the opposite of capitalist philosophy of personal control of assets, as you mention) that I, and many others, are hanging on and surviving.

On one hand you are saying self interest is bad, yet on the other you say that you don't like capitalism because it hasn't helped you

To say that capitalism would work in a perfect world is ridiculous because it has worked, in this world.  It is interesting that the farther we drift from the roots of our freedom the more America suffers.  Communism has failed because it is a seriously flawed theory that is based on sentimentality and fear.  I often find it strange that most proponents of communist and socialist based systems claim "humanitarian" reasons for their choice.  Yet that choice amounts to Forcing others to play by their rules.  Under a capitalist system if you wish to form a communist based commune that is your right.  If it is successful people will flock to it.  But the reverse is not true.  Under a communist system your freedom to trade your skills, time or products has been taken away from you.