Well to me your initial post sounded more like it was talking about the impracticality of it all and yet the despair over the mass adoption of that impractical model that forces it to be necessary.
-Paul Keith
I meant practicality in a personal sense in that we live in a predominately capitalistic society and must deal with it. (Same applies to corporations.) As for despair, yes. In some ways it is self-perpetuating as it entrenches vested interests which will always resist any perceived attack on their interests. e.g. It would be almost insane to believe that banks could be nationalized.
If economics or currency alone is what stands for capitalism then technically it's not capitalism that's the dictator but money and well... money makes the world go round isn't really a new idea and doesn't really go deep enough to dictate the market at all.
-Paul Keith
If money is the dictator, then capitalism, being strongly linked with it, is guilty by association.
Plus I don't know if it's being fair to say Compared to so and so country something is socialist and yet at the same time assume that capitalism is a blanket. Either it's all general blanket statements or then it's not really fair to say socialism gets the right to be compared to other systems while capitalism can't have the issue of being "more capitalistic" or "less capitalistic".
-Paul Keith
I believe that it's a matter of the "prevailing system" being capitalism, with various flavors of others thrown in as spice, e.g. Canada has a capitalist market economy, yet still has some socialist influences in there. It's not an all or nothing deal -- there are gray areas. e.g. By comparison, the US is more capitalistic than Canada.
The question is only one of which system is dominant, as in capitalism, socialism or some other system being dominant. (Having the most influence.)
I guess a simpler way of stating it is that there's no one capitalist economic model not even in the practical sense where as socialism is much easier in that there's a mindset of good will that runs much similar to Marxism or Communism except it accepts or admits to the economic failure of those two latter concepts at least based on how the applied systems deteriorated and that mindset alone even with the partnership of an economic model can still be narrowed down to one mindset not much different from virtues and vices. Capitalism on the other hand, it's linked to greed often times only because it's linked primarily to the exchange of currency with the ideal preference of getting more as it is a system based on competition. However once you add things like socialism into it for example or even the mere proliferation of corporations then there's always that different gap between how people view greed and how they spend their money. It all seems to really depend whether the acceptance is that it is a natural deterioration due to greed or that capitalism has many branches and often the wrong economic model forces it to take a wrong turn. Nonetheless as a blanket idea, the main thing against capitalism being a dictatorship is that money is widely used and money is most associated with capitalism. Of course I'm not really an expert and I'm not sure if by expanding on my opinion, I'm making it clearer or just making it more confusing but this is why I feel socialism is more widespread.
-Paul Keith
My reason for stating that capitalism is the new dictator is because it is so entrenched, so prevalent, so all-encompassing that any attempt to extricate any country/society/state/whatever is certainly doomed to failure (back to vested interests -- capitalism fosters them in a financial and visceral way, and they are the major resistance against any change). Further, it has fostered forces in the market/society/life that are so strong that anything different is nothing more than a twig being swept along a raging river.
Marxism/communism were doomed to failure because people simply cannot act altruistically enough to give them a chance. (If everyone were like Mother Theresa, it wouldn't be an issue, but we aren't.) They need certain conditions to be met inside of people, and those weren't there, and aren't there. We all look out for #1, and capitalism works with that very well, and rewards that. I believe that's only a statement of the obvious, the way things are.
When I say "dictator", I mean that in the pejorative sense, the common sense of the word. However, I also believe that it could be otherwise -- we could have that dictator decide to become "
the Philosopher Kingw". That of course is also
subject to corruptionw, as are all things. But it is a goal.
It's ok to inadvertently take a wrong turn. It is not Ok to purposefully take a wrong turn. At the moment, it seems like
greed is leading capitalism down a path of intentional wrong turns. e.g. It is NOT ok to pull young children out of school and pay them $0.50 a day to work in factories, even if the local laws permit it. (The argument logic is in many aspects the same as the argument logic against
clitoridectomyw.)
It's one thing to be greedy and hurt people or do damage. It's another thing to be greedy and still manage to help people. Capitalism has both going on in it. I'd like to see the former stop.
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