Quote:
Originally Posted by Willravel
Capitalism, imho, works so long as it's tempered with pragmatism and ethics. I'm more socialist than most people in the US, but I still feel that capitalism can work when we hold the rich responsible. A lot of very, very rich people get away with a lot of very illegal and unethical behavior in the US, and the fact of the matter is that many of them cannot be stopped without violating the ideals behind capitalism. In a capitalist system, those who behaved illegally or unethically would have to be punished by the market reacting to their behavior. Take Haliburton, for example. They get no bid contracts, which means that the market really can't punish them. It falls to the legal system, which is a bit torn on Hal. The solution to Haliburton seems to be somewhere outside of capitalism.
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As a firm believer in capitalism I actually agree with you for the most part. You can call it capitalism, crony capitalism, communism, fascism, or whatever, but when governments get involved in markets and don't follow through with policing them it's not good for consumers at all.
I for one think governments should be involved in fewer markets, whereas you might think they should be involved in more.
However, I hope we both agree on the problem of governments entering markets and not following through with it's job to police these corporations (like a no bid to Haliburton and then allowing them to get away with murder, literally). That is a bigger problem than the socialsim vs. capitalism debate.