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Yeah yeah. Kid's thread got threadjacked to death, and is almost at 500 anyways, so we need a new one.
I'm trying a bit of a different approach here, as well...maybe its the meds, but I have been attempting to look beyond the dry and dusty arguments for the utopia and the bloody means by which it must come about and see what lies beneath.
At the core of it, I think Kid said it very well. He is afraid of Capitalism.
Now personally, I think it's the best thing since sliced bread, but in the same breath, I can understand that fear, especially if it has been reinforced by mistreatment from haughty managers or other bosses, and the rollercoaster ride the economy takes some people (myself included) on. It ain't easy, and it ain't something that everybody has the stomach for, I guess.
And, I have always been quick to fess up to Capitalism's many failings.
Like any human system, it is imperfect, and those imperfections express themselves in stark, harsh ways in the world. Capitalism has been the cause of rampant pollution, blatant cheating, lies, wars, theft on scales never before imagined...the works.
All true.
Sadly, the alternative systems that have been tried have met with even greater failures than these (if we look in similar timespans...it would be unfair to look at a ten year period of some other economic system and compare it to the whole history of another).
The combination that seems to work best in the world is pluralistic democratically minded societies tending toward free market economcies (with varying degrees of controls, and the size of the social safety net varying in each).
Now, detractors of the system choose to look at capitalism's failings and point to them as the reasons for dismantling the system.
Valid approach, however, it then falls to them to demonstrate how and why their propsed replacement for the current system would be any better.
As a supporter of the capitalist system, I tend to look at the other end of the spectrum, celebrating the wealth of opportunity awaiting those with talent and ambition.
At the negative end of the spectrum, we see detractors of capitalsm decrying all capitalists as evildoers who seek to enact a form of modern day slavery, while at my end of the spectrum, I see the capitalist as an enabler, a facilitator of wealth generation and opportunity, who has a vested interested in helping others achieve success, with the understanding the "economics" is not a sum-zero game, and as the SIZE of the pie grows, so too, does the ability to subsidize the aforementioned social safety net. Such a situation creates additional opportunities for wealth, and in ways that are simply nonexistant in the "enslavement" scenario so often pointed out by capitalist's most ardent detractors.
It is true, the rules of the game are flexible, and they CAN BE twisted to these ends, but IN THE END, the most efficient approach will win out (the nature of the market), and the most efficient approach is to help others achieve wealth and independence, not create slaves.
Idealistic? Perhaps to a degree, yes, but certainly not nearly as starry-eyed a view as those who still pin their hopes on defunct ideas from another era, IMO.
-=Vel=-
I'm trying a bit of a different approach here, as well...maybe its the meds, but I have been attempting to look beyond the dry and dusty arguments for the utopia and the bloody means by which it must come about and see what lies beneath.
At the core of it, I think Kid said it very well. He is afraid of Capitalism.
Now personally, I think it's the best thing since sliced bread, but in the same breath, I can understand that fear, especially if it has been reinforced by mistreatment from haughty managers or other bosses, and the rollercoaster ride the economy takes some people (myself included) on. It ain't easy, and it ain't something that everybody has the stomach for, I guess.
And, I have always been quick to fess up to Capitalism's many failings.
Like any human system, it is imperfect, and those imperfections express themselves in stark, harsh ways in the world. Capitalism has been the cause of rampant pollution, blatant cheating, lies, wars, theft on scales never before imagined...the works.
All true.
Sadly, the alternative systems that have been tried have met with even greater failures than these (if we look in similar timespans...it would be unfair to look at a ten year period of some other economic system and compare it to the whole history of another).
The combination that seems to work best in the world is pluralistic democratically minded societies tending toward free market economcies (with varying degrees of controls, and the size of the social safety net varying in each).
Now, detractors of the system choose to look at capitalism's failings and point to them as the reasons for dismantling the system.
Valid approach, however, it then falls to them to demonstrate how and why their propsed replacement for the current system would be any better.
As a supporter of the capitalist system, I tend to look at the other end of the spectrum, celebrating the wealth of opportunity awaiting those with talent and ambition.
At the negative end of the spectrum, we see detractors of capitalsm decrying all capitalists as evildoers who seek to enact a form of modern day slavery, while at my end of the spectrum, I see the capitalist as an enabler, a facilitator of wealth generation and opportunity, who has a vested interested in helping others achieve success, with the understanding the "economics" is not a sum-zero game, and as the SIZE of the pie grows, so too, does the ability to subsidize the aforementioned social safety net. Such a situation creates additional opportunities for wealth, and in ways that are simply nonexistant in the "enslavement" scenario so often pointed out by capitalist's most ardent detractors.
It is true, the rules of the game are flexible, and they CAN BE twisted to these ends, but IN THE END, the most efficient approach will win out (the nature of the market), and the most efficient approach is to help others achieve wealth and independence, not create slaves.
Idealistic? Perhaps to a degree, yes, but certainly not nearly as starry-eyed a view as those who still pin their hopes on defunct ideas from another era, IMO.
-=Vel=-
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