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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (266382)	12/29/2005 6:52:10 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578260

TV presents commercials that encourage us to buy. That is prompted by capitalism Its prompted by the people who buy those commercials. You are going off track. We each think the other is going off track. I think it is because of a difference in how we use the word capitalism. I am using the word primarily to describe a free market system. You apparently use it to describe the specific way some people operate in our current example of such a system. Capitalism makes consumption very desirable. Capitalism creates the wealth that allows the consumption, and it gives people the freedom to use that wealth for consumption, but consumption is desirable for most people with or without capitalism. Feudal lords, communist leaders, the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, none of these people lived in a highly capitalist society, none of them were excessively influenced by advertising, but they all consumed a lot, esp. considering the relative poverty of the areas they controlled. Capitalism gives people beyond the leadership and its cronies the wealth and freedom to consume. And we are bombarded with adverstising all day nearly everywhere encouraging us to spend. That is true but it is more a factor in changing what we buy than the fact that we would be buying.