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Capitalism gets a bad rep.....we haven't tried it in decades.
Anyone dogging the likes of capitalism (to argue our current state of affairs) really doesn't understand capitalism. There's a far cry between free markets and government-coporate collusion and cronyism we feature today.
"A dumb man never learns. A smart man learns from his own failure and success. But a wise man learns from the failure and success of others."
Pure unbridled Darwinian capitalism has always ended in ruin... The goal of every individual is to unleash their infinite greed in the game to own more of the pie than anyone else, which leads to monopolies, power assymmytries, dictatorial control, slavery, fascism, etc,... power corrupts, as they say.. Not everyone is born with that deep seeded limitless greed in their blood... of course, the nature of evolution and its power cannot be denied, this is why the game needs to be played, but please, with rules, boxing with rules is a game, without it's just some kind of bloody race to the bottom...
It's just not true...the fallacy of other forms of government and economy is that they can bridle and keep at bay the inherent greed and powerlust you describe. The ONLY thing that keeps greed in check, is competitive greed. The free market itself forces market participants to curb their greed and desire. Healthy free markets are the best functioning.
It was capitalism and the free market that saw the establishment of the first middle class in world history.
Besides, we don't have "pure inbridled" capitalism. We have anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws, patent laws (to encourage investment and risk).
We took a system that worked for decades and even centuries and succombed to this liberal pipe dream that "we can make it better" by providing social welfare to the less fortunate. When we opened the door in 1913 to squashing the Constitution, that was the beginning of the end. That was Pandora's box.
The Federal Reserve Act along with income taxes allowed the Federal government to begin to borrow (and spend more) which allowed them to conduct a policy of war adventurism, social welfarism which both brought on even more spending (and more power and corruption at the Federal level).
No system is perfect, that's what we failed to acknowledge and instead of sticking to a good thing, we kept messing with it.
Murphy's Law #5 "If it's not broken, keep fixing it until it is."
"A dumb man never learns. A smart man learns from his own failure and success. But a wise man learns from the failure and success of others."
The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods. In short we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.
For my part I think that capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself it is in many ways extremely objectionable.
Capitalism is “the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds.”
- Keynes
Welcome to the dark science. I have to agree with what you say here, except for the so called regulations in place to oversee monopoly and competition and market efficiency. The republicans gave a number of ultra powerful investment banks a blank cheque, firstly in rights to do anything they wanted to the public markets, inclusive of monopolistic plundering, etc, and secondly a cheque for upwards of one trillion dollars. This is not well managed capitalism. This is unbridled capitalism. This is how the US debt clock has gotten to where it is. Blame it on what you will, but it was this disregard for regulation combined with the monetarist economic approach of Greenspan and now Bernanke that has printed this 15 TRILL in debt. I'm definitely not for some Orwellian government, no thanks, I like freedom, but someone has to be in charge and responsible somewhere. And personally I would have preferred to see that money spent on putting people to work building something great like a clean energy infrastructure rather than just handing it over to the bankers at 0% so they can collect the interest on the 15 TRILL. The middle class has been completely gutted and no longer believes in the anti-trust laws. It's a bloody mess that's for sure... Only quick and dirty way out in my opinion is to tax the black market, 35% of the economy, gut all non-essential government programs, and bring in a flat tax of 10% and burn the tax code so people like Romney actually pay the same tax as everybody else... and of course legalize the holy herb, give us our freedom to toke our peaceful pipes and keep your religious views to yourself.... now there's a Republic
There are THOUSANDS of examples that prove Keynes wrong. Millions of examples.
The drug industry is a perfect example. Why would a company, RISK huge amounts of wealth and resources in order to develop a drug that satisfies an operable need in society? Greed.
Then in a huge twist of fate, idiot liberals cry foul when a person or group of people develop a new drug or technique and consumers feel like the price is too high.
Hey, here's a blinding news flash for those people, if it weren't for the person(s) that risked their time, effort, sweat, tears, money and dreams on making it, you wouldn't HAVE it to begin with....so in order to PROTECT that phenomenon, to reward venturism and entreprenuership, we HAVE to protect this system that rewards people for advancing our society.
Why do you think that the $US is where 90% of the new drugs and techniques and equipment come from? Why do you think they don't come out of Canada or the EU? Because in those countries, there's no REWARD for such endeavors. And when there's no reward, there's very little incentive (other than some altruistic, intrinsic motivation by someone to do "good" which is powerful no doubt, but pales in comparison to greed and fear.)
Greed (the prospect of more prosperity) and fear (the prospect of failure or losing your property) is what drives markets, drives innovation and advancement.
There are other motivators, and we can discuss the ultra wealthy and their motivations (in a different thread) but at it's core, capitalism is chiefly responsible for 90% of the advancments and innovations in the modern world.
Why does China have 6 times the population of the United States and has never won a Nobel Prize? Did you know that there are more Chinese citizens with what we consider a "genius" IQ than there are Americans in total?
I'll tell you why, it's called CAPITALISM. It's called REWARD, it's called "FREEDOM AND LIBERTY."
The Chinese are hella good at pirating and reverse engineering other people's technology. They're very good at leveraging their cheap labor supply (for manufacturing) but when is the last time you heard of a top of the line product being developed and made in China?
China doesn't manufacture ANYTHING high performance that the rest of the world does. No airliners. No automobiles.
I'm a shooting/firearms enthusiast...if you want to buy the top of the line optics, you don't buy them from Chinese manufacturers, you buy German/Austrian glass or Japanese glass or American (German is the best). But well over half the rifle scopes bought come from China...they can make the HELL out of a low end, low quality product.
"A dumb man never learns. A smart man learns from his own failure and success. But a wise man learns from the failure and success of others."
Millions of examples on Keynes being wrong??? What on earth are you talking about?
Keynes was not a politician or a policy maker. He developed the IS-LM model for analyzing economic systems, a pure mathematical approach to modelling economies. It's truth or untruth is not in debate, it is what it is, a tool, and it is used by all economists today, from Harvard to Chicago, from Greenspan to Bernanke, they all use Keynes' IS-LM model to explain and analyze economic forces. Keynes was a seeker of truth, and his framework models are logic based, not opinion based. There is a reason that he is oft quote by US Politicians in congress, by Bernanke and Greenspan and central bankers the world over, from Buffet to Blankfein, Keynes is revered. His ideas are as valid today as when he created them. To say that fiscal stimulus to support an ailing economy is wrong either puts you in the monetarist camp or it put you in no camp. During the great depression there was a gold standard in place and there was no monetarist approach available. Since then it has been debated which is the better policy tool. We are now seeing the brilliance of the latter. Give bankers free money and they will spread it around get things going, or just buy government paper and ask for more free money as we are seeing now, that's capitalism..
Obviously I am a capitalist, what else is there? But I do not agree that a responsible government has no place in it. In your comments about Canadian innovation you are suggesting it's because our government is too big, I would point you to the fact that less than 1% of Canadians work for government while in the US over 7% do. A Smaller Percentage Of Americans Work For The Government Now That At Any Time Since 1987 - Business Insider
I don't know how the drug industry is a perfect example of Keynesian economics. At any rate to say that Chinese medicine is not innovative and does nothing but copy American pharamaceutical companies could not be further from the truth. Chinese medicine has been a continual science for over 5000 years. They don't use, like, or respect Western medical practices. It's another world altogether, and to say that western medicine is automatically superior is quite ignorant. They are doing major ground breaking work in antirvirals and antibiotics, and not to mention human performance enhancing drugs.. As for US pharmaceuticals chasing the mighty dollar as their prime motive, not a single new antibiotic is currently being researched in the US where superbugs are fast becoming a major issue. Why, there is not enough money in it. The real money is in diet pills and antidepressants, cheap to make and with a huge demand base.
Today, Canadian banking corporations are the strongest in the world and the average Canadian is richer than the average American. Is there a case for putting the bridle on and regulating some corporations?
"Let’s suppose six castaways are stranded on a desert island, five Asians and one American. Their problem is hunger.
So they sit down and divide labor as follows: One Asian will do the hunting, another will fish, the third will scrounge for vegetation, the fourth will cook dinner, and the fifth will gather firewood and tend the fire. The sixth, the American, is given the job of eating.
So five Asians work all day to feed one American, who spends his day sunning himself on the beach. The American is employed in the equivalent of the service sector, operating a tanning salon that has one customer: himself. At the end of the day, the five Asians present a painstakingly prepared feast to the American, who sits at the head of a special table built by the Asians specifically for this purpose.
Now the American is practical enough to know that if the Asians are going to continue providing banquets they must also be fed, so he allows them just enough scraps from his table to sustain them for the following day’s labor.
Modern-day economists would have you look at the situation just described and believe that the American is the lone engine of growth driving the island’s economy; that without the American and his ravenous appetite, the Asians on the island would all be unemployed.
The reality, of course, is that the American is not the engine of growth, but the caboose, and the best thing the Asians could do would be to vote the American off the island—decoupling the caboose from the gravy train. Without the American to consume most of their food, they’d have a lot more to eat themselves. Then the Asians could spend less time working on food-related tasks and devote more time to leisure or to satisfying other needs that now go unfulfilled because so many of their scarce resources are devoted to feeding the American.
Ah, you say, but that analogy is flawed because in the real world the United States does pay for its “food” and Asians do receive value in exchange for their effort.
Okay, then let’s assume the American on the island pays for his food the same way real-world Americans pay, by issuing IOUs. At the end of each meal, the Asians present the American with a bill, which he pays by issuing IOUs claiming to represent future payments of food.
The castaways all know that the IOUs can never be collected, since the American not only produces no food to back them up, but also lacks the means and the intention of ever providing any. But the Asians accept them anyway, each day adding to the accumulation of worthless IOUs. Are the Asians any better off as a result of this accumulation? Are they any less hungry? Of course not.
Whatever the reason, China’s going to be eating better than they would if they keep pouring gas into America’s sputtering economy.
If China’s central bank were really smart, they’d be the first to blink."