On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 03:59:38PM -0600, \0xDynamite wrote:
A capitalist, or “free market,” system is one in which the prices of goods and services are determined by consumers and the open market, in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority.
WOAH WOAH woah, hold it right there. You've just conflated two major topics of economic theory: the free market and capitalism -- NOT THE SAME. You can have a FREE MARKET under socialism and COLLECTIVE ownership. But all the owners have to agree generally to sell it on the open market.
Firstly, you are quoting the article I posted.
Equally as bad is the fact that, in these same countries, large corporations have become so powerful that, by contributing equally to the campaigns of each major political party, they’re able to demand rewards following the elections, that not only guarantee them funds from the public coffers, but protect them against any possible prosecution as a result of this form of bribery.
This is the real issue. Apparently the drive and advantage given to individualism by the FREE MARKET itself (because the consumers have to REWARD the individual for him/her to become a giant) has given them enormous advantage, politically. So again, the real question is: why do the people do this?
Secondly: - Are you saying the American government is democratic? - Are you also saying that corporations succeed because in America there is a FREE MARKET (to use your all caps)? - Are you saying that "the people" who "do this" are acting in, on, or otherwise by, free market and democratic principles?
There’s a word for this form of governance, and it’s fascism.
And there's a word for this type of effect: APATHY (from the people). There is an undiagnosed mental illness in the general populace, probably caused by mass injections of polio to children. It is clinically diagnosable using the criteria of the DSM.
Many people today, if asked to describe fascism, would refer to Mussolini, black boots, and tyranny. They would state with confidence that they, themselves, do not live under fascism. But, in fact, fascism is, by definition, a state in which joint rule by business and state exists. (Mussolini himself stated that fascism would better be called corporatism, for this reason.)
I think this is a distortion of fascism, which to me simply means rule by ideology, not specifically business.
May be so.
The choice of the reader is to look upon the world as his oyster - to assess whether he is more or less content with the country he’s in and confident that it will continue to be a good place in which to live, work, invest, and prosper, or, if not, to consider diversifying, or even moving entirely, to a more rewarding, more capitalist jurisdiction.
Huh? No, what needs to happen is a diversification of economic experiments.
And the article you responded to above is pointing out the obvious - that we do not have a modern democractic, or capitalist, experiment ... at least that's what I think it's saying…