Does Capitalism Ensure Freedom?

[georgephillip]

Please cite something from the Federalist Papers that says that the purpose of our government is to ensure equality of opportunity according the Progressive Definition of the government choosing winners and losers.

Isn't that like asking me to publish something from the Federalist Papers condemning slavery or ensuring the right of women to vote?

Instead of framing your position in terms of "government choosing winners and losers", you might consider supporting society's attempt to compensate for accidents of birth among its citizens?

Compensating for accidents of birth is just Orwellian-speak for picking winners and losers, bub.

Not unlike a "free" market operating with rules written by those with the most $$$.

 

[georgephillip]

RD Wolff is the best known Marxist economist in the US today, and he says capitalism does not serve freedom to the extent its apologists would like you to believe:

Poverty Has Always Accompanied Capitalism

"Capitalism usually overthrew its predecessor system (often feudalism, sometimes slavery or still others) violently and accompanied by slogans of 'freedom' as in the French revolution's 'liberte, egalite, fraternite' or Lincoln's 'Emancipation Proclamation.'

"Capitalism represented itself as freeing serfs, slaves, etc.

"Freedom became capitalism's self-celebration which it largely remains.

"Yet the reality of capitalism is different from its celebratory self-image.

"The mass of employees are not free inside capitalist enterprises to participate in the decisions that affect their lives (e.g., what the enterprise will produce, what technology it will use, where production will occur, and what will be done with the profit workers' efforts help to produce).

"In their exclusion from such decisions, modern capitalism's employees resemble slaves and serfs.

"Yes, parliaments, universal suffrage, etc. have accompanied capitalism - an advance over serfdom and slavery.

"Yet even that advance has been largely undermined by the influence of the highly unequally distributed wealth and income that capitalism has everywhere generated."

Poverty is the goal of socialism...they just want it for everyone but the dear leader and his minions....

Ask Venezuela..........

"Being the ex-President's daughter pays off: Hugo Chavez's ambassador daughter is Venezuela's richest woman"

Read more: The richest woman in Venezuela is Hugo Chavez's daughter
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Socialism has never been tried, and it won't succeed until it's practiced in the USA.

Crony socialism has been tried all over the world...the best outcome is a low standard of living...till you run out of capitalists to tax.......then you get poverty and food shortages..........the worst...100 million people in mass graves.......

Where does capitalism come from?
How many lives has it destroyed?

 

[Iceweasel]

Where does capitalism come from?
How many lives has it destroyed?

You are stuck on stupid.

 

[Fang]

Unless the OP can name a better economic system this thread is EPIC FAIL.

Richard D. Wolff: Poverty Has Always Accompanied Capitalism
"Why do you see another economic implosion, as we saw in 2008, as inevitable under the current capitalistic economic order in the US?

"While 'inevitable' is not a word or concept I use, my sense of what has happened in and to the US economy sees reason to believe another 2008-like implosion is quite likely. The reason is this: no real changes have been made in US or global capitalism. Corporate capitalism proved strong enough and its critics weak enough to enable the imposition of austerities as the chief policy response everywhere. So the speeding train of capitalism is 'back on track,' resuming its rush toward stone walls of excess debt, stagnant mass incomes, capital relocating overseas, etc. The too-big-to-fail and the too-unequal-to-be-sustained have only become bigger and more unequal. The ominous sense of impending implosion reverberates throughout the national politics and culture."
Worker self-directed enterprises offer a better alternative than the current economic model, imho.

You didn't answer the question. What's the better system?

 

[georgephillip]

Where does capitalism come from?
How many lives has it destroyed?

You are stuck on stupid.

One of us is.

 

[georgephillip]

Rhymes with Rich?

 

[Iceweasel]

Where does capitalism come from?
How many lives has it destroyed?

You are stuck on stupid.

One of us is.

I've worked for myself for 31 years so it's you who's stuck on stupid.

 

[Skull Pilot]

How well did capitalism preserve and promote capitalism in Central America?

Central America suffers from corruption on an epic scale
In fact all South America does

 

[JakeStarkey]

How well did capitalism preserve and promote capitalism in Central America?

Central America suffers from corruption on an epic scale
In fact all South America does

Thank you for proving my point.

 

[Skull Pilot]

As for as socioeconomic systems go

Communism works well on the smallest scale say up to 100 people

Libertarianism can work with populations up to a few thousand

I think we are seeing where capitalism starts to have problems but IMO it's more a problem of global markets and trade barriers and politics causing many of those problems not capitalism itself

Socialism is the only system that can be scaled up beyond all the others but inevitable the bureaucracy necessary for that size centralized government ends up grinding people under it's boot heels and small pocket of black market capitalism and barter systems pop up by necessity to allow people to live under the yoke of an oppressive central government

So of these socioeconomic systems capitalism is the one worth saving above all the others

No system will provide equality once the numbers of people get beyond the small societies that communism and libertarianism can support

That's just a fact of life

 

[Skull Pilot]

How well did capitalism preserve and promote capitalism in Central America?

Central America suffers from corruption on an epic scale
In fact all South America does

Thank you for proving my point.

It's not capitalism that makes them corrupt

 

[JakeStarkey]

How well did capitalism preserve and promote capitalism in Central America?

Central America suffers from corruption on an epic scale
In fact all South America does

Thank you for proving my point.

It's not capitalism that makes them corrupt

OK.

 

[Skull Pilot]

How well did capitalism preserve and promote capitalism in Central America?

Central America suffers from corruption on an epic scale
In fact all South America does

Thank you for proving my point.

It's not capitalism that makes them corrupt

OK.

HAve you ever been to South America?

I have. It's the politicians that are corrupt and they taint the entire system

 

[JakeStarkey]

How well did capitalism preserve and promote capitalism in Central America?

Central America suffers from corruption on an epic scale
In fact all South America does

Thank you for proving my point.

It's not capitalism that makes them corrupt

OK.

HAve you ever been to South America?

I have. It's the politicians that are corrupt and they taint the entire system

I have and still OK is the only answer to your silly comment.

 

[georgephillip]

Capitalism and "free markets"
Does Capitalism equal Freedom?
" Historian Fernand Braudel says capitalism and markets could equally well be conceived as polar opposites.
Markets are ways of exchanging goods through the medium of money.
Or to put it another way, 'C-M-C', commodity-money-commodity.

"Capitalism is at its heart, the art of money getting more money.
Put another way, 'M-C-M'.

"Capitalists tells us that a farmer or merchant buying and selling goods in your neighborhood is fundamentally equal to a Wall Street banker trading interest rate derivatives on an international exchange.

"Yet you know this isn't true.

"It's an example of the difference between markets and capitalism..."

"Once you break the idea of markets from capitalism then the whole argument of capitalism equals freedom starts to fall apart."