Reply #66: There's nothing truly free about Laissez Faire Capitalism anyway.

[patrice]

Inequities create advantages which build systemic inertia which perpetuate inequities which produce advantages etc. etc. until the whole thing self-destructs because mediocrities are conserved and nothing is reality based.

It isn't as though a whole lot of regulations would be any better, but that what we need is to recognize the reality of what so-called LF Capitalism is (it isn't free for all and it isn't open) and we shouldn't let others get away with characterizing it as somekind of panacea.

This is also germane to corporate tax issues. TeaPartyers and such bitch about how corporations SHOULD be taxed less, as though corporations were somekind of independent economic force unto themselves, which we have enslaved and which would serve all if left completely to their own will, but corporations, or at least the ones we have, would not exist at all if they had not received tax favoritism from the start. If they had to pay truly Free Market rates for the resources that they need and use, they'd be much different, smaller, and many even non-existent, than the corporations TeaPartyers say should be taxed less. What we have are corporations grown fat on the government tit and mewling and puking now for more of what is ultimately OUR blood, sweat, and tears. Corporations don't exist for us; we exist for them.

It's time that Labor be regarded as Adam Smith said, a Real Value. Money is not a value on parity with Labor. Money is abstract. Labor is concrete. Money is private digits processed in private processes managed by private computers. Its value is whatever its owners say it is.

Labor produces real goods and services. It is what changes the world, adds real value, not money. Humans should receive Real Value in exchange for the Real Value of their Labor. What good capitalist would invest something of Real Value (their Labor) and accept only something of arbitrary ambiguous value in exchange, like money?

Real Value for Real Value, American labor would be guaranteed a complete and appropriate Education, comprehensive, lifelong Health Care, and a SANE national defense apparatus (not one gobbling up almost 50% or all federal revenues for decades past and to come ((and that doesn't even count the money spent on DOE Weapons programs, a.k.a. Nuclear Weapons, and all kinds of Black Ops that No One ever knows about, but which most certainly have been up and running for generations))). Real Value for Real Value would also include Trade Policies that benefit American workers more than they benefit the Chinese.