Saturday, November 8, 2008

Capitalism

You know, it just doesn't appear to work all that well.

At then end of the day, a system needs to be able to be as self sustaining as possible. Capitalism has never been that. Capitalism is ultimately bound up in getting as much for yourself as possible and screw the rest of them. Capitalism is a system that takes in more than it puts back. We just now started noticing.

What I find really surprising is how here in America capitalism has somehow bound itself to fundamentalist Christianity. Now that took quite a bit of eye-closing and looking the other way. If the New Testament had anything kind to say about the endless acquisition of wealth and personal aggrandizement that passes for American neocon capitalism, I will go out on a limb and tell you that what it said was not flattering and did not serve as a road map to heaven.

Even more surprising is the equation that makes economic success and personal freedom one and the same. The bill of rights outlines a lot of things, but the right for an individual or corporation to grow obscenely rich at other peoples expense is not there.

Cuz you see, like it or no, we have spend the last hundred or so years building up a house that seems to made on a slippery, shifting mix of bastardized ethics. We started with the rail barons and the Standard Oil Trust and ended up here.

Unlike a lot of folks here in Tin-Foil hat land, I am not really all that concerned about the US Government trying to oppress me. I consider the idea of the UN trying to oppress me laughable.

What I am concerned about is the capitalists. The Banks would have no trouble instituting Eupatridae right here in the USA. In my honest opinion, George Bush was the moral and political equivalent of Alciebades and the big banks and brokerage houses serve as the modern 400.

So, I say screw the banks, screw the stockbrokers, hell, even screw the big companies. If we are going to be truly free, we have to break their hold on us. But you have to remember, you will be free, but you will have a lot less stuff.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't know. If we actually had a capitalist economy things might not be like they are.

The United States and most of the world for that matter actually have a mixed economy. Pieces of it are free market and others are centrally controlled (aka govt controlled).

Now we also have a slightly twisted form of free market. Not only does the government apply the rules (aka regulations) it also interferes, competes, and enables the elimination of competition.

The current tax structure and buy a polotician system is hardly a free market. It makes it far to easy for giant monopolies to come into existance and for the government to play fovortism to certain groups over others eliminating true competition.

And a mix of regulated internal to a state but unevenly regulated across a global economy in which those entities must compete without tarrifs and such. Well thats a reciepe for disaster and thats exactly what we got.

For a free market to exist all companies within a single competition sphere must be regulated equally. The government must not play forvortism and companies must be limited from forming mega corporations that blot out competition.