KungFuGuy

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, but i started thinking that the economic environment isn't exactly as capitalistic as it used to be in the traditional sense.

for instance, its pretty hard starting a new business these days, as it seems everything favors businesses already established, particularly huge mega profit corporations.

The existing economic structure also seems to be stifling competition. examples of this range from gasoline price fixing to independant bands not being able to make it big without huge distribution corporate backing.

now, a lot of people like to argue that many of the stories you hear, like companies like IBM moving jobs overseas, are just results of capitalism. this is kinda hard to argue because we've all been engrained with the ideology that capitalism is great because it works and its gotten the USA to where it is today, (and then the history teacher points at USSR). its also hard to argue, because traditionally, capitalism HAS been very good to the USA.

however, I feel that many of these things ppl argue as "results of capitalism" are really the result of an emergance of "corportism".

i'm not an economics major (so maybe i'm just ignorant) but i would hazard to guess that before the emergance of corporations, laws and such to open new business probably favored more locally operated outfits.

i'm pretty much just free thinking this out right now, so please interject your own thoughts on the matter. just please, if you take issue with my examples, like the USSR one, say what you want to say and then get back to the overall topic. i dont want the thread turning into a capitalism vs. communism thread afterall...