Slade3200
Diamond Member
- Jan 13, 2016
- 65,315
- 16,444
- 2,190
I'm not avoiding anything, nor did I dis Ayn Rand, I believe I complimented her. I'm not talking about some pure theory, I"m talking about real world application. Flaws exist outside of government influence... It's part of nature. You can denying it and preaching about the utopian capitalistic model that no country will ever achieve because it is unrealistic, or you can deal with real world applications. Al wasn't a politician but he has show a tremendous ability to understand how things work. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss.It sounds to me like you've been reading some Ayn Rand, great author and provoker of thought but not without flaw... Just like capitalism. Another great thinker of our time, Al Einstein had some opinions on the matter:You may attribute all issues to over-regulation but I just don't agree.
Well you don't agree because you keep being told by the socialists that we need more government solutions to fix the problems and that is what you've come to accept as the truth. As I have demonstrated, there is nothing corrupt or unfair about pure free market capitalism. The corruption happens when government interferes and removes free market mechanics. You are trying to fix the problems of too much government interference with more government interference and what happens is, the problem is never fixed... it continues to get worse with each passing "fix" you implement.
We have to start returning to free market, private sector solutions for our problems rather than assuming government can fix everything. The more government does to fix things the more freedom we lose and the more fucked up things get.
Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of the smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights....
...Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.
This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career. ~Einstein, Monthly Review Article May 1949
I don't agree with everything that Al mentions as I believe he is focusing a little too much on the dark side, however he does bring up some valid points. Nothing is without flaw. Flaws lead to abuse and corruptions which ultimately lead to issues that need to be dealt with. It is the nature of life, business, and our government. We need to consider what we've learned from history and implement the systems with their flaws being considered, focusing on the useful elements and protecting against the problems. Pure capitalism doesn't always benefit the all the people, only those who play its game, Survival of the fittest as I mentioned before. This inherently is its flaw.
Okay, so now... you avoid the topic of free market capitalism and the point that in it's purest form it isn't corrupt or unfair... and you start criticizing Ayn Rand and promoting Albert Einstein as an economic philosopher. I'm not going to apologize for sounding like Ayn Rand and Albert Einstein is a noted physicist who didn't even get physics right sometimes. Having been raised in a Nationalist Socialist system, he is hardly an expert on free market capitalism. Much of what he is ranting about in the article you posted is what I am calling "corporatism" or socialist-capitalism. We went through this, it's nothing at all like free market capitalism.
The only "flaw" with free market capitalism, if you can call it a flaw, is that it can't be tinkered with to be improved by government.