Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (109876)	11/11/2007 9:21:35 AM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Skeeter, >you might not like what happens in a capitalistic society, but it happens. every time.< It's possible that some % of the people will always hate capitalism and some % of capitalists will always be corrupt enough to help put them in power to take advantage of the rest of us. I certainly do not expect huge changes in my lifetime, but I do think the 20th century was somewhat unique. We had a very flawed banking system to begin with. That was a primary reason for the depression. At the same time, socialism and government activism was still considered a viable alternative philosophy. Once the seeds of socialism were planted, the weeds grew wildly over the next few decades. Even massive flaws in economic systems take decades to reveal themselves. Things are a little different now. The heavily socialized economies under communism proved their inferiority and eventually collapsed. We are now probably only a few decades away from the mixed economies of the west starting to run into very serious economic and currency problems as all the government promises of the prior decades start coming due. (it's taking a lot longer in the west because we were only 20%-50% stupid) IMO, at some point in the future, government and fiat money will become totally discredited. The reasons for the eventual failures have been elaborated on by people much smarter and literate than I am. But I have read their works. We will never get rid of corruption. I'd just rather cope with private corruption using private resources than private corruption using corrupt government, adding another layer to the corruption, and having to pay taxes for it too. The real and only issue is taking care of the people that weren't blessed with the skills, intelligence, mental/emotional health etc... to make it in a capitalist society. How to best do that without planting more weeds will be the key question after the western governments start defaulting and breaking their socialist promises.

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (109876)	11/11/2007 12:47:46 PM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

Skeeter, I'll elaborate slightly more. IMO, communism did not fail because of corruption. It probably failed sooner than it should have because of corruption. But the fundamental flaw was socialism. (The Chinese communist power remains in power because of the switch to a partially market based economy) A system that cannot measure profits, return on investment, etc... cannot allocate capital efficiently in order to grow the economy to its potential and meet the needs of the society. That says nothing about the problems associated with motivating people without financial incentives. Just imagine Warren Buffett sitting in a room trying to make capital allocation decisions without knowing how each company was actually doing. Then picture the average Joe in that job doing it in his central planning office in government. Some corruption in the private sector is unavoidable. But we are allowed to make rules that govern business. I'm not an anarchist. We are also allowed to make rules that govern what can and what cannot be part of the government. I know less than nothing about constitutional law, but many people feel that a lot of what the government is doing now is not constitutional to begin with. I won't argue the point because I can't. But it didn't have to be this way. We did it to ourselves and can undo it. We need the conditions for it, just as we needed the right conditions to screw ourselves up.