Originally posted by theovermensch
It seems that the best defence of capitalism is that nothing else can work.
I think if that is the case we should all just kill ourselves.
I think it is foolish to continue on with a system that has failed.
The United States, nor any other country, practices capitalism.
There is only one kind of capitalism and that is free market capitalism (laissez-faire). Once restrictions or government intervention are applied to
capitalism, it is no longer capitalism but central planning. Capitalism, though unbelievably complex is actually very simple to understand.
Capitalism, very simply and completely is: a voluntary, consenting exchange of goods between two parties, for their own mutual benefit without the
outside threat of force.
Like it or not, that is Capitalism. Sound horrible, right?
Central planning board, Supreme Dictator, Prime Decision Maker, or everything other than capitalism, is an abolition of independent economic planning,
which exists only under capitalism and the price system. All other systems are characterized by price and wage controls, and thus by shortages and
government controls over production and distribution.
These bastardized and centralized systems decide not only the prices and wages charged and paid, but also what is to be produced, in what quantities,
by what methods, and where it is to be sent. This, in turn, destroys the voluntary, self interested economic planning of millions and results in chaos
because capitalism is the only system that can coordinate and harmonize the activities of all the millions of separate, independent planners.
The system we have today is the result of a handful of government officials, who, having prohibited the planning of everyone else, presume to
substitute their knowledge and intelligence for the knowledge and intelligence of tens of millions thereby destroying a system rationally planned by
the combined, self-interested efforts of all who participate in it.
There is no country in the world that practices capitalism. All economies are centrally planned and regulated. The foundation of world peace is a
policy of laissez-faire, not control.