<The most important factor to understand if one is going to know America is that it's capitalist to the extent that money can buy the government. Therefore, very profitable industries can and have manipulated the laws to their advantage, not to the advantage of the country or the people.

The easy answer to this is to remove the government's ability to control economic activity, i.e. get rid of the mixed economy, but people don't want to hear that because it would remove their ability to use that power to get the goodies THEY want. This is why when I make this same damn point over and over again, it bounces off of Bowser like a ping-pong ball off a battleship.

Suffice it to say, in a country where the state can tell you where to build a factory, how to build it, who to hire, what to pay them, what machinery to use, what you can make, what you can't make, how you must make it, where you can sell it, how big the holes in your goddam Swiss cheese are, and how much of your profits you get to keep, you definitely have some kind of economic system, but pure capitalism sure ain't it.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.



- P. J. O'Rourke