@xris,
xris wrote:It may not be but it is the case, it has destroyed our economies and attempts to cover its tracks with new shippp paper money..It is a result of capitalism that we see this sickening distortion of the real economy and the unrealistic demands it makes on our societies. Capitalism demands constant growth the earth and its inhabitants can not sustain, with capitalism we are all doomed.Revolution is always better than the status quo, bring it on.
If an inflationairy monetary system in private hands is not a part of capitalism, how can you blame capitalism for the ills of an inflationairy monetary system? Non sequitur. Our constant boom and bust is the result, not of the free market as the talking heads would have you believe, but of the credit cycle: i.e. the periodic expansion and contraction of credit by the central bank. Manipulation of interest rates is THE most important reason for the loss of manufacturing in the U.S., the stagnation of wages, etc. Artifically low interest rates encourage risk and malivestment. Every bust is actually an attempt by the 'invisible hand,' i.e. the physical reality of the economy, to correct imbalances, such as investment in derivative products based on mortgages during a housing boom. Every time the government intervenes with stimulus, or the central bank lowers interest rates or acts as the 'lender of last resort' is prevents that correction and in fact increases the magnitude of the imbalances. O, so government intervention prevents downturns, that good. Wrong, its only DELAYS downturns. At some point there is too much debt, too much pent-up inflation and too much inefficiency for the economy to reinflate, no matter how much money the government spends or the central bank lends. Instead of experiencing minor recessions periodically, as are bound to occur, and which actually increase efficiency and prosperity by selection of the fittest, we are going to experience, when the point of no return arrives, all the cumulative damage at once, magnified. In other words, it is a giant Ponzi scheme. My point is that all the ills you attribute to capitalism are not inevitable consequences of a free market, but rather the inevitable consequences of central planning by the government, in coordination with the banks and corporations that control the government. It is fascism that you don't like, not capitalism. And I agree with that sentiment. Permanent growth is also not reqiuired by capitalism, at least not permanent expansion of physical infrastructure, consumption, etc. The insane and insustainable growth in certain areas of the economy, such as consumption, is the result of government central planning. An inflationairy system encourages spending and discourages savings. Essentially, via central planning, we have been able to live above our means and borrow from imagined future prosperity: which won't arrive to save us because of those very policies, which create inefficiency. The only thing that constantly increases in a free market system, with periodioc interuptions of course, is efficiency, at whatever task is needed by members of society. Whether a socialist, communist, or capitalist system, all economies are based on the free market. We have to start with that; it is like a fact of nature. The only question is how that natural process of supply/demand and exhange can be perverted or manipulated, and can a government make decisions about the needs of society better than the society itself, as expressed by the functioning of the natural market. To believe that the government can do this, allocate resources more efficiently than the free market, is founded on two enormous and, IMO, insane asumptions; 1) the government's bureaucrats, sitting in some office building with mountains of statistical data, are better capable of determining and balancing the needs and abilities of the national economy than the economy itself, which is a manifestation of the those needs in reality; 2) the government is benevolent and objective, and never would manipulate the economy to the advantage of special interests. I don't find either of those assumptions at all realistic.
