(April 21, 2012 at 12:25 pm)mediamogul Wrote: #3 is putting it lightly. The primary driving force behind laissez-faire unregulated capitalism is profit and capital. The ultimate guiding forces are not principles per se but sheer market forces. It is a kind of "natural selection" in that companies which are profitable survive and those that aren't do not. For instance if it is not profitable for a company to clean up an oil spill they will simply not do it. Monopolies would form. Nevermind workers rights and things like setting a minimum wage or collective bargaining. Regulated capitalism works, unregulated capitalism would be a nightmare.
Which is why not even Laissez-Faire calls for completely unregulated market. Regulations regarding theft and coercion are required even there.
(April 21, 2012 at 12:25 pm)mediamogul Wrote: Can you name a couple example countries? To my knowledge the countries with the highest standards of living have significant socialized government programs such as education and healthcare.
As indicated before - there has been no application of pure Laissez-Faire. In fact, I doubt we even completely understand how we would implement it. However, here is a list of countries according to the degree of economic freedom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freest_economy
I believe that you'll find that the standard of living is also high in these countries.
(April 21, 2012 at 12:25 pm)mediamogul Wrote: Even under our current regulated US economy (though significantly less regulated than the prosperity of the 50s) we have seen a stagnation in wages for low and mid level employees and an exponential growth in the wages of higher level management and CEOs. Not to mention growth in their salaries during a huge recession. The 1% continued to amass wealth even when the vast majority of the remainder of the population saw a stagnation or reduction in their wealth, employment, and wages. This is in a regulated economy. In an unregulated system there would be no checks to ensure that the rich don't simply completely screw over the poor once and for all. Even if total wealth increases why would those who set the wages and are responsible for the distribution of the wealth not simply continue to amass capital and profit for themselves?
Not being a US citizen, I cannot fully comment on that. But are your government regulations actually working towards equalizing the wealth or are they helping the upper management cover their tracks? Wasn't it government involvement and bailouts because of which those CEOs were able to escape the consequences of their actions?
