General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: "Sorry, It's Not a 'Law of Capitalism' That You Pay Your Employees as Little as Possible. It's..." [View all]fasttense
(17,301 posts)One of the problems when discussing capitalism is that it usually does NOT stand by itself. It can't. It would destroy any society that decided to do only a capitalist society. Most of the time things like markets, industrial and technological improvements, slavery, feudalism, traditional privately owned businesses influence economies that call themselves capitalist. But people like to ascribe all of these influences to capitalism when they are merely a part of a functioning economy.
You say capitalism has lifted people but how do you know it wasn't market influences or technological improvements that lifted people?
There have been many economic models that have been successful. Feudalism and slavery are 2 models that have been very successful. Yet very few people ascribe the success of the Revolutionary war to slavery even though it was a successful and large part of the economy back then. Look how successful feudalism was and yet freedoms we enjoy today implemented back in the days of rulers and serfs are not ascribed to that economic model. Yet we ascribe so many successes to capitalism that frequently people mistake capitalism for democracy.
You suggest that we continue to attempt to control capitalism by regulating it much like FDR did during the last great depression. But look at what happened to those regulations put into place to prevent another great depression. They were removed and we got another great depression or great recession. Controls on capitalism only work as long as the rich capitalist allow them to. If they see a chance to make huge gobs of money by repealing regulations well then they use all the money we allow them to repeal the regulation. As long as you allow a handful of greedy men to make decisions about capital that we the people allow them to accumulate then they will continually undermine all regulations by using that very wealth and power you have permitted them.
There really has never been a real socialist country. The Soviet Union merely took away the wealth and power from the capitalist and put it into the hands of government officials. They thought they could always vote out the officials but you see even in the US voting does not always represent the will of the people. So instead of capitalist CEOs and boards, the old USSR had politicians and the Politburo.
Here are just a few examples of socialist corporate entities and business that are very successful:
http://www.alvaradostreetbakery.com/
http://biofueloasis.com/about-us/
http://broadwaybicycleschool.com/about/
http://www.mondragon-corporation.com/ENG.aspx
A corporation and federation of cooperatives in the Basque region that employs more than 80,000 with the policy of one worker, one vote.
And I agree no system is perfect, but we can do a whole lot better than what we have now.