Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Amazing.

So Bush and Paulson Are Socialists?
Marsby — (archived)

They started us down this path Tom with grave concern because they thought it was the only option. It's pretty hard to accuse Democrats of being socialists for following a Republican lead during what is clearly an abnormal period requiring emergency response.

The fundamental flaw in your entire outlook is that America's basic foundation is capitalism and that it is somehow unamerican to want anything but absolutely free anarchic capitalism. The foundation of America is Democracy not capitalism. If we voted in a socialist system we would still be a democracy. Democracy and capitalism go very naturally together due to the underlying principles of freedom of choice. However, neither one is a stable equilibrium and a rational consensus and active management is needed to keep both centered where most people are happy with the outcome. Both capitalism and democracies have failed around the world many times just not generally as bad as the alternatives.

The positives of capitalism are suppposed to derive from competition and freedom of choice. From time to time and to various degrees the competition is won then competirion and freedom of choice are reduced. Power concentrates and the competition becomes rigged or at least unbalanced. Competition and freedom of choice drop further. For capitalism to achieve it's positive potential it has to be maintained in the unstable competitive state and not allowed to devolve into crony capitalism or kleptocapitalism. That requires the very regulatuion that repells you. I thought we learned in the early 20th century that monopolies were bad and that a hands off attitude with regard to regulation leads to greed running amok. Apparently history is not one of the things most Republicans are interested in conserving (along with the environment).

If you want to claim someone is a socialist for favoring regulation in any form I'm going to sate uneqivocally that's a load of crap. Socialism is absolute government control of the economy or a specific portion of it. Any control bears some resemblence to socialism, but no one is for no government control except loons. The difference is whether the control is intended primarily to protect people or control what is produced. A goverment run health system is socialist, but as a democracy people have a right to choose it if they want along with a choice as to whether any other service should be provided by government.

Regards,
Mark

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (86 posts)