In Reply to: if capitalism is the answer, why all the problems? posted by Sally Conner on June 05, 1996 at 17:56:37:
Actually I prefer freedom to equality.
You can't have both, because
some people, according
to REASON and the behavior of most people,
are less valuable than others.I often tell those who want to save
the world, to please
do it with their own effort and money
and keep their paws out of my pockets
and their whip off my back.Welfare (in any guise: subsidy, food stamps
regulation, monopoly franchise, inflation
Medicare and Medicaid, SS, etc.)
is slave (forced) labor.People who are
productive (who earn their way) turn
over their income, by threat of force
via the IRS and Congress, to people who
have not (the unearned).That is the evil, the immoral. In America,
we are born into a contractual "debt" to
the poor imposed from above.What we have is not really capitalism.
We have built a welfare state, a mixed economy.
Although in the 1800s we had something
resembling a free market economy,
We NEVER had a FREE market system
in the USA. We never had capitalism.We never fully protected private property rights
in America.Today, we live in a bloated, corrupt, special
interest, welfare state, suffering under the
new schemes piled on top of
the remains of past failed corporate and social
welfare schemes. All of these new
ideas for stealing money from
poeple are medieval even ancient, much like a two-headed
Sheriff of Knoddingham and Robin Hood creature.Over the years we have built such infrastructure
for corruption in the form of the "progressive"
tax codes, transfer payments, subsidies,
the Leviathan of the "great" state.Obviously private property is not respected
in the United States by the unthinking mob.The government, by rule of the mob and by way of
well placed lobbyists
violates our rights,
and takes what it wants all in the name of
egalitarianism or progress or
whatever dunderhead term is the excuse for
stealing our incomes by the stroke of a
pen in the middle of the night.Of course, it must be said that
America is the freest, noblest,
greatest country on earth whose mixed economy
has been and is more capitalist than most,
has produced the very highest
standard of living in terms of
both material wealth (even for those who
don't deserve it)
and individual liberty (even for
those who don't know what that it.We may someday reach that unknown
ideal of Capitalism, and when we do
Disneyland will look like a bad rest
stop in New Jersey in by comparison.A CLUE for you:
Read ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand.