Your Thoughts on Capitalism

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DrDeath3191

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Since we seemed to have an influx of Socialism related threads recently, I've decided to create a thread for the opposite extreme. What are your thoughts on Capitalism?

I like Capitalism more than Socialism: it ensures that the people who perform better get better things, thus encouraging effort. People manage only themselves, and those who do well thrive. I can understand the problem of the weak becoming weaker and the strong becoming too strong: that is a serious issue with pure Capitalism. Overall though, I prefer it to its opposite.

How about yourselves?
 

GHMonkey

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hope you packe dsomething flame retardent, i see a storm coming, a flame storm
 

SonicKoala

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Capitalism is as good an economic system as anyone seems to be able to come up with - however, as has been demonstrated several times in the past, there NEED to be government regulations put in place in order to ensure continued stability; other than that, GO CAPITALISM!!
 

DrDeath3191

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GHMonkey said:
hope you packe dsomething flame retardent, i see a storm coming, a flame storm
Don't worry. I still have some left over from all the times I took the Conservative stand on any issue.
 

A Weary Exile

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I agree with most of your post OP, but we need to find the middle ground between Capitalism and Socialism to keep things fair for everyone, so the achievers get ahead in life but don't prevent everyone else from getting ahead based on their efforts. 'Pure' Capitalism is probably the only aspect of Objectivism that I don't agree with %100 (About %90-ish).
 

A Weary Exile

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tellmeimaninja said:
Utopian Communism is great. Unfortunately we live in the real world where people are corrupt, Soldiers are paid less than athletes, and people like Paris Hilton are actually considered "role models"
Utopian Communism and utopian capitalism have the same flaw: They both rely on everyone following the rules. Which is why a middle-ground is required.
 

APPCRASH

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I'm cool with it. I have money AND I don't need to share it with others.
 

ReincarnatedFTP

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APPCRASH said:
I'm cool with it. I have money AND I don't need to share it with others.
I take it you never plan on paying taxes, or donating to charity and corporations then right?
 

stone0042

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I think this is a completely reasonable thread, and I agree with you. Capitalism works. Socialism doesn't. Don't hate me, hate history.
 

Combined

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Only thing that works in this God-forsaken world. Let's hope it continues to work and remains decent and wholesome.
 

Silver

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It promotes greed, selfishness, it expands gaps between people, it completely invalidates the American declaration of independence, in that in a capitalist society all men are in fact not created equal, since some, like Paris Hilton, are born into the wealth, the capitalist way of saying nobility. Since it also stands in the way of the freedom and human rights of very many, I'd say it undermines that part too.

No, I don't really like it all that much.
 

Signa

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I think the Capitalism is WAY better than Socialism, but seeing as we live in a Capitalistic country, I'm seeing some of its heavy flaws. I doubt I need to get into it too much since my thoughts were summarized in the opening post, but I'd just like to see some Socialistic restraints put on out Capitalism. Namely, if you are a fuck-wit that has more cash than they know what to do with, you'd damn well stop hoarding it. I'm not jealous of those who make millions, because I don't want more money. I just am sick of seeing all these people who are suffering and yet you have some rich guy spending more money on a car they will never drive than the lifetime income of some guy just scraping by to support his family. Some of these rich bastards don't even do a lick of work, because all they have to do is sit back and own a company while they get their employees to do all the work for them.

Then things get REALLY bad when they start spending their money to bribe and lobby for laws that help them make more money. So many companies will get laws passed so that there is some special exception for them with taxes so they don't have to give back to the country that helped them get so rich. I swear the future will be like the one in The Longest Journey where corporations run the government. I got a laugh and a chill when your character said it was a corporate offense to board a bus without a ticket, and was punishable by multiple years in prison.
 

Rooster Cogburn

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I don't like capitalism- I prefer a free market.

Yes, this defies conventional use of the terms. Most refer to capitalism and free markets interchangeably. I don't object to that usage, but it frequently leads to definitional chaos. For one thing, many old sources refer to 'capitalists' violating freedom and property rights to gain power over the poor. What on earth is 'free market' about that? There are even American sources complaining that the American Revolution was being undone because 'capitalists' were taking their freedom. It may lead to interesting considerations to see capitalism contrasted with liberty in the most red-white-blue, Founding Fathers (yada-yada) patriotic sort of language.

And since nobody reads The Ethics of Liberty, people end up treating existing property claims as if they naturally arose from some free market- somewhere. They end up acting like our current corporate state and sweat shops in southeast Asia are the result of a free market. They're not. The rich are making a killing off those people- by way of government mandate.

Anyone who tries to convince you that free markets tend toward anything but the expansion of the middle class at the expense of the other classes probably has an underhanded agenda in my opinion. That is the near universal declaration of both Republicans and Democrats, after all. In conclusion, I like freedom, and I like capitalism to the extent that it implies freedom.
 

ReincarnatedFTP

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stone0042 said:
I think this is a completely reasonable thread, and I agree with you. Capitalism works. Socialism doesn't. Don't hate me, hate history.
Socialism!=Communism

But yeah, France,Germany,Sweden,Canada,Finland,Norway, and Denmark are all horrible places to live, and America ranks above them consistently in every area.
 

Datalord

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Capitalism in functional in the presence of finite excess, while communism is functional in the presence of no excess and seemingly infinite excess
 

Chuplayer

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Capitalism is cool, but CEOs and other ridiculously highly paid assholes have got to go. I hate them so much. They're filth.

Beancounters are shit, too. And they're rather useless, really. With the money they spend giving beancounters bonuses for cutting costs, they could have just put the money towards giving people better working conditions in the first place and gotten a more productive and happier workforce for it.
 

Anacortian

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If my capitalism you mean the use of money to divorce the act of buying form the act of selling, I like it. This is not, however, what you mean. You mean a libertarian free market. I also like that. A free market insures liberty by forcing everybody to respect the property rights of everybody else.

Socialism makes plebeians of most and patricians of a very few. I would rather be neither. In a free marker, some may be born richer, but they will not be born better. Socialism instantly creates a small, patrician, governing class that can do as it pleases at the expense of the plebs.

I do not recommend an ungoverned free market; we all have to play by rules.

Lastly, I am not aware of a free market in extant in our world. Europe, to my knowledge, lacks one. The US are not. I think we can rule-out the red countries. Maybe Singapore. I really think Hong Kong was.

Either way, let us liberate our markets and we will liberate ourselves.
 

Thamous

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Signa said:
I think the Capitalism is WAY better than Socialism, but seeing as we live in a Capitalistic country, I'm seeing some of its heavy flaws. I doubt I need to get into it too much since my thoughts were summarized in the opening post, but I'd just like to see some Socialistic restraints put on out Capitalism. Namely, if you are a fuck-wit that has more cash than they know what to do with, you'd damn well stop hoarding it. I'm not jealous of those who make millions, because I don't want more money. I just am sick of seeing all these people who are suffering and yet you have some rich guy spending more money on a car they will never drive than the lifetime income of some guy just scraping by to support his family. Some of these rich bastards don't even do a lick of work, because all they have to do is sit back and own a company while they get their employees to do all the work for them.

Then things get REALLY bad when they start spending their money to bribe and lobby for laws that help them make more money. So many companies will get laws passed so that there is some special exception for them with taxes so they don't have to give back to the country that helped them get so rich. I swear the future will be like the one in The Longest Journey where corporations run the government. I got a laugh and a chill when your character said it was a corporate offense to board a bus without a ticket, and was punishable by multiple years in prison.
That's and ethics problem, simply because a person was successful does not make him responsible in any way for people who are not. If the person wants to help the poor, more power to them but if they too bad.

Anyway, I personally like the idea of everyone living a good equal life but don't like how socialism/communism go about achieving that goal. Some people work harder and do more important things then other people, why should they be delegated to live worse than they deserve to? Socialist systems simply don't work and I don't believe they ever will.
 

Signa

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Thamous said:
Signa said:
I think the Capitalism is WAY better than Socialism, but seeing as we live in a Capitalistic country, I'm seeing some of its heavy flaws. I doubt I need to get into it too much since my thoughts were summarized in the opening post, but I'd just like to see some Socialistic restraints put on out Capitalism. Namely, if you are a fuck-wit that has more cash than they know what to do with, you'd damn well stop hoarding it. I'm not jealous of those who make millions, because I don't want more money. I just am sick of seeing all these people who are suffering and yet you have some rich guy spending more money on a car they will never drive than the lifetime income of some guy just scraping by to support his family. Some of these rich bastards don't even do a lick of work, because all they have to do is sit back and own a company while they get their employees to do all the work for them.

Then things get REALLY bad when they start spending their money to bribe and lobby for laws that help them make more money. So many companies will get laws passed so that there is some special exception for them with taxes so they don't have to give back to the country that helped them get so rich. I swear the future will be like the one in The Longest Journey where corporations run the government. I got a laugh and a chill when your character said it was a corporate offense to board a bus without a ticket, and was punishable by multiple years in prison.
That's and ethics problem, simply because a person was successful does not make him responsible in any way for people who are not. If the person wants to help the poor, more power to them but if they too bad.

Anyway, I personally like the idea of everyone living a good equal life but don't like how socialism/communism go about achieving that goal. Some people work harder and do more important things then other people, why should they be delegated to live worse than they deserve to? Socialist systems simply don't work and I don't believe they ever will.
The problem with ethics problems is that they will never go away because it's hardwired into Human nature. It's the exact same reason why Socialism doesn't work. No one wants to work for the greater good, so Socialism falls flat on its face. Capitalism at least rewards the need to be top-dog, but you still run into that pesky greed issue once you become top-dog. That's why I said it would be nice to borrow a few pages from the Socialism book to put a glass ceiling on top-dogs. They can have higher and higher goals, but it doesn't help them screw over the little guy in the process. What measures would need to be enacted? Hell if I know, but it's a problem, and some one needs to start looking for a solution before we are going to death row for stealing from the Kroger corporation when our kids wanted that pack of gum.

Damn I sound like a hippy with all this "corporations are take over" talk.