Death by capitalism (the meme thread)

[Silver]

[brewer]

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!

[Brian37]

Far too much of the time the word "capitalism" is left alone, without clarification, and both the left and right misuse the word. 

It really means nothing more than to seek and "capitalize" off gaining and or selling resources. There is not one government, friend or foe that is not involved on the global market, to some degree.

Communism is a form of government, and communist China ALLOWS the private sector in China, and is why when you go to Walmart you see "made in China" on tons of the products sold there. Fidel Castro had an estimated personal wealth of $800 million. Gadaffi was a billionaire whom owned stock in General Electric. The Saudi Royal family owns oil companies and banks and invests in the global weapons industry.

Capitalism is not something that only exists in open societies in the west. Even in totalitarian brutal states like North Korea, the ruling Kim family ALSO has global investments and would not be able to pay their army to protect them if they did not.

That is not to say I am happy with how the west conducts business, I am not. Even in the west there is an abuse of power and abuse of wealth. But even in saying that, lets not chase utopias ourselves and chase an impossible utopia of ending all private business ownership on the entire planet. That will never happen.

What can happen, is is exposing more and more worldwide that 62 uber billionaires worldwide have the combined wealth of 3 billion of the rest of us. Simply sitting on money and making it only about competing for shareholders to gain profits is counter productive and does not create global stability.

Global trade and the private sector globally is not going to go away. But we can push more of the world to face the fact that it doesn't do the world any good to think wealth is the only important aspect of our species.

[Dr H]

Communism is a form of government,

Well . . . no, it isn't.

Communism is an economic social theory, with possible political ramifications.

It has been adopted by certain governments to greater or lesser degree (mostly lesser);
to date the major examples of those governments have unfortunately been authoritarian.

Communism is not, however, a necessary component of authoritarianism.


As regards the comments concerning "capitalism", I mostly agree.

[vulcanlogician]

[RoadRunner79]

You are free to start your own factory, put a bunch of money into it, and then give all the money and control over to everyone else. The great thing about capitalism, is that if you think you have a better idea, you are free to pursue and test it.

[The Grand Nudger]

[Jane2d]

Sucks if ya gots nothing to trade.

[vulcanlogician]

The problem with capitalism isn't that moochers want something they didn't earn. It's that capitalism treats human life/time/welfare as a commodity. This in itself wouldn't be so bad, but the going rate for this commodity (human labor) is naturally low. (There are tons of dudes around.) Under capitalism, human life is an expendable and exploitable resource.

People who have a problem with capitalism see human life as something more valuable than what the market says it's worth. If we allow the free market to put a value on our human dignity, then we do not trade goods in the marketplace. WE are traded like goods IN the marketplace. If you see that as inevitable, fine. But if you see it as all fine and good, then you mustn't see much inherent value in human life to begin with.

[Amarok]

I love how Conservatives confuse Communism with a welfare state when Marx would have completely rejected a welfare state .Proving once again Conservatives attack an ideologies poor implementation rather then it's core idea's .