I say that crony capitalism has overtaken free market capitalism over the decades. Capitalism has not been ruined, we need to get corporations out of our federal regulating agencies and elections. Our kids have been misled by education, but they’re not stupid. They see government handing out corporate welfare and leaving the public holding the burden of paying for it. If the government made the companies internalize their own cleanup costs instead of creating “Super Fund Sites” it would be a step in the right direction. I can still hear the sucking sound of our manufacturing jobs moving offshore because of NAFTA, and USMCA isn’t any better, because very few jobs came back. True free market capitalism would fix so many problems in this country that it boggles the mind. Crony capitalism works against creative entrepreneurship and building new industries that provide new jobs of the future. We also have a shortage of workers who can work in the trades, plumbing and HVAC and power generation. There’s plenty of opportunity for the free markets to thrive, but we need a change in the government system to do it. That’s why we should all be voting for Robert Kennedy Jr, he has the blueprint for the resurgence of the free markets in which everyone has a stake in the economy.
If you think Wealth inequality is bad under capitalism, wait to you see the wealth inequalities under communism, with a side order of mass murder, mass starvation, and genocide.
There is no free market in fisheries, agriculture, education, health care..even the very means of production (capital) is centrally planned fiat currency with centrally planned interest rates. You need a fucking license to cut someones hair! Please let me know when we try capitalism so that we can compare.
Best line: "Capitalism, he says, didn’t fail, it was ruined... Constant government intervention and the relentless spread of a bailout culture distorted capitalism’s original intent — to ensure individual liberty and opportunity through limited government intervention."
The whole idea of competition between capitalism, socialism, and communism argument is all wrong. We can't just blame our failings as people on them. As economic mechanisms, they are all right. The choice of which of the three we use depends on the nature of the problem. They each work at different scales. They fulfill different needs. Any one of them by themselves is a recipe for disaster. We need all of them to succeed.
Unrestrained capitalism treats everything as a transaction. Greed becomes the weakness. That leads to monopolies, company towns, sweatshops, price gouging, predatory loans, and many more ways for greed to show it's effects.
Unrestrained socialism becomes tyranny. Abdicating our personal power to a central authority leads to people who use that power against us. The consolidated wealth creates too tempting of a target for people to forego their obligations for personal gain of wealth and power.
Unrestrained communism becomes a race to the bottom. As long as people have no motivation to succeed, we suffer from those who don't do their share and become parasites to society.
It is an interplay of the three that create the means to overcome our personal weaknesses. We have to use the combination of the three to serve different needs as appropriate. We have communism to fulfill the needs of selflessness to come together to do that which does not benefit us directly. We need socialism to direct our individual authority to consolidate our power to do that which must be done to benefit everyone where individual power is insufficient. We need capitalism to motivate people who wish to better their circumstances by their efforts.
Monopolies are not a product of capitalism. Monopolies can only exist when the state limits competition by either regulation, licensing, or other means.
Those are possible but also there is price fixing and selling at a loss to kill competition. Once competition is gone, they can put the screws to everyone.
It is like a casino. If you start out with enough money, the house always wins.
I can not think of a single example of a business that did not have competition without state involvement protecting that business. The casino is a great example. Only an idiot would do business with a casino, just like only an idiot would do business with a company that "puts the screws to them"
They have no problem just buying politicians to have the state tilt the table in in their favor.
It doesn't have to be the whole business being a monopoly such as we saw with the railroads and Standard Oil.
We actually see it all the time. Companies preventing vendors from selling replacement components. Software lock-ins for equipment that prevents you from getting service outside of their system. Constant changing of plugs to require you buy from one vendor.
It can also be through abuse of the patent and copyright system. The system is supposed to be a limited time protection in exchange for the things being eventually brought into the public domain. They have been leveraged into lasting in perpetuity.
Free and Open source software solves all of this. You have a choice of software, and components.... See my casino comment above. I will agree the patent and copyright system is problematic. Which is why the software I mention above is under CopyLeft licence. Again, vote with your wallet.
That's fine for a desktop computer but desktop computers are a small fraction of the market. The problem is with the computers in your car, television, tractor, heart monitor, and the thousands of other devices I could list.
Even for your desktop computer, if you are looking for someone to work for you, you want someone that can be productive without making a huge investment of time and money training them on some other software. That's why all those companies hand out software to all the schools and students so that is what the students learn with. That creates a vendor lock in. It is cheaper and easier to provide the software that the users are familiar with than train the users on something else. Once they have taken the market captive, it is almost impossible to displace them.
This is from the perspective of someone who is sitting at a Linux computer and retired from working with computers professionally and I am a big fan of free and open source software. There is a small segment of the users who can and will make that leap away from the ecosystem of Microsoft and Apple.
I say that crony capitalism has overtaken free market capitalism over the decades. Capitalism has not been ruined, we need to get corporations out of our federal regulating agencies and elections. Our kids have been misled by education, but they’re not stupid. They see government handing out corporate welfare and leaving the public holding the burden of paying for it. If the government made the companies internalize their own cleanup costs instead of creating “Super Fund Sites” it would be a step in the right direction. I can still hear the sucking sound of our manufacturing jobs moving offshore because of NAFTA, and USMCA isn’t any better, because very few jobs came back. True free market capitalism would fix so many problems in this country that it boggles the mind. Crony capitalism works against creative entrepreneurship and building new industries that provide new jobs of the future. We also have a shortage of workers who can work in the trades, plumbing and HVAC and power generation. There’s plenty of opportunity for the free markets to thrive, but we need a change in the government system to do it. That’s why we should all be voting for Robert Kennedy Jr, he has the blueprint for the resurgence of the free markets in which everyone has a stake in the economy.
If you think Wealth inequality is bad under capitalism, wait to you see the wealth inequalities under communism, with a side order of mass murder, mass starvation, and genocide.
There is no free market in fisheries, agriculture, education, health care..even the very means of production (capital) is centrally planned fiat currency with centrally planned interest rates. You need a fucking license to cut someones hair! Please let me know when we try capitalism so that we can compare.
Best line: "Capitalism, he says, didn’t fail, it was ruined... Constant government intervention and the relentless spread of a bailout culture distorted capitalism’s original intent — to ensure individual liberty and opportunity through limited government intervention."
The whole idea of competition between capitalism, socialism, and communism argument is all wrong. We can't just blame our failings as people on them. As economic mechanisms, they are all right. The choice of which of the three we use depends on the nature of the problem. They each work at different scales. They fulfill different needs. Any one of them by themselves is a recipe for disaster. We need all of them to succeed.
Unrestrained capitalism treats everything as a transaction. Greed becomes the weakness. That leads to monopolies, company towns, sweatshops, price gouging, predatory loans, and many more ways for greed to show it's effects.
Unrestrained socialism becomes tyranny. Abdicating our personal power to a central authority leads to people who use that power against us. The consolidated wealth creates too tempting of a target for people to forego their obligations for personal gain of wealth and power.
Unrestrained communism becomes a race to the bottom. As long as people have no motivation to succeed, we suffer from those who don't do their share and become parasites to society.
It is an interplay of the three that create the means to overcome our personal weaknesses. We have to use the combination of the three to serve different needs as appropriate. We have communism to fulfill the needs of selflessness to come together to do that which does not benefit us directly. We need socialism to direct our individual authority to consolidate our power to do that which must be done to benefit everyone where individual power is insufficient. We need capitalism to motivate people who wish to better their circumstances by their efforts.
Monopolies are not a product of capitalism. Monopolies can only exist when the state limits competition by either regulation, licensing, or other means.
Those are possible but also there is price fixing and selling at a loss to kill competition. Once competition is gone, they can put the screws to everyone.
It is like a casino. If you start out with enough money, the house always wins.
I can not think of a single example of a business that did not have competition without state involvement protecting that business. The casino is a great example. Only an idiot would do business with a casino, just like only an idiot would do business with a company that "puts the screws to them"
They have no problem just buying politicians to have the state tilt the table in in their favor.
It doesn't have to be the whole business being a monopoly such as we saw with the railroads and Standard Oil.
We actually see it all the time. Companies preventing vendors from selling replacement components. Software lock-ins for equipment that prevents you from getting service outside of their system. Constant changing of plugs to require you buy from one vendor.
It can also be through abuse of the patent and copyright system. The system is supposed to be a limited time protection in exchange for the things being eventually brought into the public domain. They have been leveraged into lasting in perpetuity.
How about companies buying up their competition?
Free and Open source software solves all of this. You have a choice of software, and components.... See my casino comment above. I will agree the patent and copyright system is problematic. Which is why the software I mention above is under CopyLeft licence. Again, vote with your wallet.
That's fine for a desktop computer but desktop computers are a small fraction of the market. The problem is with the computers in your car, television, tractor, heart monitor, and the thousands of other devices I could list.
Even for your desktop computer, if you are looking for someone to work for you, you want someone that can be productive without making a huge investment of time and money training them on some other software. That's why all those companies hand out software to all the schools and students so that is what the students learn with. That creates a vendor lock in. It is cheaper and easier to provide the software that the users are familiar with than train the users on something else. Once they have taken the market captive, it is almost impossible to displace them.
This is from the perspective of someone who is sitting at a Linux computer and retired from working with computers professionally and I am a big fan of free and open source software. There is a small segment of the users who can and will make that leap away from the ecosystem of Microsoft and Apple.
Very interesting take! I’ll be spending some time mulling this over!