Stop Blaming Capitalism: for Socialism’s Failures
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HMOs, the health care crisis, strip mining, robber barons, deforestation, SUVs, “global warming”, world hunger, unemployment, inflation, periodic recession/depression…what all have in common is that Big Government is the cause, but your economic freedom is blamed.
Politicians tend to force bad government programs on us, which then have destructive side-effects, usually the opposite of what’s intended, and then saying the effects were caused by whatever freedom of choice is left over, and trying to take that away.
Included in the list of such failures:
- HMOs
- The Housing Market / Sub-prime Mortgage Bubble:
- SUVs
- The Savings and Loan Bailout
- Bailouts
- Robber barons, Strip Mining, Deforestation
- Corporations
- Monopolies and oligopolies
- Oil / Gas Prices
- Energy Prices
- Hunger
- Automaker Bankrupcy
- Alternative Energy
An entire group founded around this topic, including extensive discussion of it, can be found at Stop Blaming Capitalism, for Socialism’s Failures
(It's amazing how many things government forces on us, which are then blamed on our freedom)
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But Now You Know 
Socialism, in a country such as ours especially, is paid for by capitalism. Without it, there is no socialism to worry about.
Rumor on net: US Navy labs have “Depleted Uranium” Super Battery under wraps, held for “Defense Purposes” that would solve the Energy Crisis – It takes a variable Wind Turbine charge of any voltage/amperage in hand, and charges, it dispenses same power through load, at even current/voltage, making Wind Turbines 100% Efficient!Even traps “gusts” of wind Also: Resolves Solar nighttime power!Also: resolves a use for the stuff! Where are the vulture Capitalists when we need them? Why do they allow restrictions of any kind to stop them from exploiting good stuff like this and the “Super-Insulations” also hidden by patent rights to hold back the “Free Market”? Something is wrong with this picture, I am too ignorant to know just what it is, but if my government has “secret batteries” that I paid to research, I should benefit! Especially if it is in the national interest, and could help get us off foreign oil! Diesel: Diesel engines, especially Euro diesel designs are up to 40 % more efficient, by their very high compression ignition design alone! America can switch to these engines from existing spark-ignition engines almost overnight, and save 40 % on our foreign oil bill! We know this and do nothing! Why! Is the oil/economy effect a lie? Are we being duped again? Why Ethanol from corn? Who profits? Is bio-diesel from corn a better deal due to higher efficiency engines? Does Capitalism really work for the benefit of the country, or the corporation? Give me a turbo -diesel made in Germany, yielding over 45 mpg, then hybridize it for Uber-Economy in city driving, over the crap we are being forced to drive today! Can the Capitalist propagandists let go of their large commissions long enough to save the countries economy this way? They haven’t yet, and right now, it takes over one thousand U.S. dollars to buy one little Troy ounce of Gold in this world! Goddammit! We are losing the battle against even China and the “Yuan”!
amen
The Uber-Rich of America are on the Shanghai, Hang Seng and Beijing stock markets with capital invested in the unshrinkable, unshakable “Yuan” and collecting dividend checks as we speak! GM(America) has one hope, called the “Volt” and so far it is vaporware! It only exists as computerized drawings and “Proto-types” to entice government money and fool the public Detroit City, GM and corporatism’s monument to their stay in America, a modern-day Johannesburg in the American mid-west, and third world at best! Even the schools lag those in Africa! We are a laughing-stock reminent of what we once were, not bigger or better by a longshot! and we are knee deep in pollution, nuclear waste and political clown Shiite from Washington! How can anybody miss the facts! How can anybody see them and not want a revolution! Even communism is more honest with its people! Socialism of Obama might be the change the Union movement needs to regain power in America and throw the dirty little capitalists to hell out! Banksters, Wall Street and all! Stretching hemp when wronged is an old American practice that needs reviving, especially for treasonous Banksters, swindlers Shylocks, and the like! Last Call1 Last call America!
Wow, you managed to make your own little list of socialist problems that silly people blame on capitalism.
American automakers lag behind consumer demand for two main reasons: Regulations that make change slow, or illegal, and the effective ban on new car companies to force the old ones to compete.
The Volt is not Detroit’s only hope, because there is actually very little demand for crappy little electric/hybrid cars that do more harm to the environment than good. You ARE aware that the Prius is bad for the environment, right?
The reason US schools lag behind is largely that we have a more socialized education system than even the otherwise-socialist countries. Most countries let the parents decide where to send their kids, and just foot the bill. We, instead, have state-mandated education monopolies. End the protected status of public schools, letting parents choose where to send their kids (vouchers), and our education system will be the best in the world, as we are in most other things.
As for pollution, the US is actually one of the least pollutive countries on the planet, per unit of production. But because we are the most productive country on the planet, we have more total pollution. This is a sign of how good the US is, not how bad. If the rest of the world were not relatively unproductive, they’d pollute even more.
Nuclear waste? Are you insane? That stuff is so sparse and easy to store that it’s irrelevant. If only we had privatized, legal-to-build nuclear power, it would be the only additional “alternative energy” we needed.
As for bankers and wall street, the problem is that socialists set up regulations that made those industries disbalanced and dangerous, and now are bailing them out, which is (again) a form of socialism.
Deregulate those industries, and let any bank or other financial company that is failing go under, and the consumers will set them straight.
The tyranny of socialism most certainly cannot but make things worse.
yeah cause the soviet union was a great shining example of good governance for the people right? you know nuclear reactors that blow up, grain sitting in fields unharvested because the leader said something else was more important to do at the time so people starved (the US had to send food aid i believe). and the socialism under hitler was a brilliant example of a centrally planned economy?
oh and how about the great and wonderful things that are being done in venezuala? you know, all those high paying jobs and fully stocked grocery stores now that chavez has kicked out every bit of foreign investment and redistributed farmland to everyone else making every farmer poor? its great hes removed the profit motive from his country, that way everyone starves!!!!YEAH!!!! i cant recall but i am sure that oil production might be a little worrisome when it comes to efficiency and safety but, i guess ol hugo just hasnt gotten around to controlling that little part of the economy yet, cause im sure he’ll do a bang up job on it (or has he already…nah it had to have worked, its socialism).
i hear cuba has a nice leader too. best medical care in the world, of course thats as long as americans continue to invent the medical equipment….and drugs……and supply trained doctors.
nah, i dont see a problem at all with socialism eh!!!
The problem with most liberals is that they see the world from a very simplistic and even childish point of view. They need parents. They need a boss. They need a leader.
When something goes wrong their first thought is “the government should really do something about this!”.
I read a comment on a blog the other day that basically said that “socialism was bailing out capitalism”, meaning that the current government was bailing out banks and automakers. This comment is dumb and wrong on so many levels but quickly the main reasons are:
– No capitalist (or conservative) that I know of really supported the bailouts
– If something is being helped by the government, said thing ceases to be “capitalist”. If it were capitalist those entities would be sold like everything else.
– Like most public handouts, I don’t think the bailouts will work, meaning that the wording itself is a misnomer
I think conservatives tend to be more mature, generally, and prefer to manage themselves and prefer for others to manage themselves. I personally don’t think the government has any place in my personal life or in businesses owned by the private citizens.
If the government were tasked with a simple task like say, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the entire country, they would do a very bad job of it and those sandwiches would cost $20 each to make.
Anyhow, very nice article.
Yeah…families need tons of engine power to drive kids to soccer practice. A Toyota Camry just can’t get the job done. God save people who live in hilly areas.
First, nobody has any legitimate right to force a family to justify their desire for a large, powerful vehicle, any more than to require that you show why you need something as wasteful and unhealthy as Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
Second, they would not choose THAT much engine power, but the CAFE regulations have made all alternatives to SUVs so small and weak that there’s no middleman.
Not to mention that the owner of a smaller car is three times as likely to die in a crash as the owner of a larger car…and people absolutely do have a right to protect their lives, even statistically.
U.S.A. is infested with a corrupt and all powerful corporatism that if left unbridled will destroy the country itself! Ford sold the ‘Pinto” Death-traps with full corporate law protection – look it up, you’re on the net! Tainted peanut butter sold till the very killing of folk! GM(America) goes down but GM(China) turns a profit on our dime? – The aAmerican Uber-Rich infestation of the Shanghai stock-market! WTF? Factory Farming of pigs, but no bio-gassing of the sewage from them? no fertilizer plants, like the rest of the World does? Causes world wide swine flu? Howcum? Nuclear plants wasting energy with “Cooling Towers” instead of heating whole cities like in Danemark? Sweden? Why? Americans Shiite all over the most beautiful land on earth instead of bio-gassing, to fuel, and top-soil building fertilizer of city sewage resources, like Sweden, Germany, even parts of England! Detroit City, automotive corporatism’s last monument and gift to America upon parting for Asia – a New-World Johannesburg, complete with crime, poverty and deprivation, right in the middle of what once was the richest country in the world! WTF? America is today what Capitalism rendered from the wilds for two hundred years. America is broke. America is unemployed. America has a Shiite-load of unemployable “Legacy Workers” from jobs gone to Asia. America has huge trillion dollar debts. America depends on foreign oil to survive, and cannot pay for it. America feeds its population a “Diet of Early Death”, giving them the worlds fattest asses, bar none! America will soon require a form of selective breeding through “conscription” to maintain its armed forces while cleansing its population. America will go to war with China, at the Afghanistan/Turkmenistan border, for oil rights. America allows propagandists to give common folk a feeling of “Entitlement” as a sales gimmick, to promote deep personal debt and enslavement to “The Man”. Planned obsolescence, a dishonest business ploy, drove American car makes out, American jobs to Asia.for a better ROI? Assholes! Simple nuts and bolts cost the military hundreds of times their real value due to lobbyists and unfair contracting practices. If the “American Way” of corporatism, and capitalism so goddammit good, howcum the Asians are taking over so fast? American schools, the laughing stock of the educational world have, simply, failed miserably! Capitalist, corporative, notions going on here? “Dumbing Down” not just a rumor? Read the book! goddammit! read the book! Stunning manipulation of us all revealed there! America is a “Corporate Catastrophe” mired in legalese,that smothers anything good, and squeezes the last drop of blood out of even the people! America is not a classless society! The Uber-Rich fly to India for kidney, cornea, liver, and heart transplants, the average American dies! pay-offs make the legal system more corrupt than the one we once fled in Europe, and drugs abound, so much so, Mexico’s cities have wars in the streets for distributorship rights in the U.S.! Because America is stoned! Drunk! and Drugged out of their minds! The police find good, secure jobs enforcing semi-effective laws, and all is well! Dope sells, cops have mortgages, Money makes the world go round! America’s prison population is over 80% colored! Goddamn! Why? Crime in the streets of America is a given! Is this what corporatism and Capitalism has given us? Is this what we, the democratic people want? What is wrong with this picture and how do we change it, before Anarchy breaks out, or worse, before we fall into “Third-Worldship” gobbled up by corporatism and no longer a free people at all? Remember tha days? All you Blacks, Back of the Bus!
Let’s be real…there are specific ways the US is worse than given other countries, but overall citing European economic activities as preferable to America’s is self-defeating. The socialist “solutions” of Europe is why they are abjectly dependent on America for their economic survival.
And the problem with corporatism is that it’s too socialist, not that it’s too capitalist.
There is so much half-truth in this article it’s impossible to determine where the bullshit ends.
For example, let’s take the argument that government research hinders alternative energy. I’m not saying they don’t screw stuff up (of course pure capitalistic companies do to), but they did a pretty good job getting the internet started (DARPA and NSF). This was an easy one.
I hope you have more things you wish to refute, because so far you’ve failed:
DARPA/NSF completely botched the Internet. Before they gave it up as useless, allowing it to devolve to private hands, it was almost impossible in most places to even get access, if you were not in some privileged group like a government contractor or university, and if you COULD get access, it cost several times what it does today, for dramatically inferior service.
The government pronounced the internet both useless for its original purpose (which was a secure government intelligence network), and doomed for its current function (because the government could never afford to expand its bandwidth fast enough), and abandoned it.
At that exact time, it exploded into popularity and usefulness, creating the Information Revolution.
Just as would happen to alternative energy, if the government got out of the way.