<You believe that maximum profits are more important than matters such as worker safety and compensation, and emission controls. Companies can be trusted to act in a responsible manner in these matters.

You believe that companies can be trusted, and conditions such as the coal miners and company stores were anomalies and not that bad, anyway. The Bolivian copper miners making 25 cents a day and dying by age 35 would have been worse off under any system besides capitalism.



Well, your sarcasm is, as always, cute. Since I am procapitalist, I must be a thug, since of course all capitalists are crooks, just like all conservatives are idiots. I must support crime, pollution, and abuse of workers. I apparently believe that because the Bolivian workers should not be subjected to a communist totalitarian system that I am perfectly happy with their current conditions*. Does it occur to you that there might be other alternatives?

Again, your basic premises are wrong. You believe that most people who run companies are inherently evil, and will cheerfully lie, cheat, steal, harm employees, and dump crap into the environment to make an extra buck. Sure, there are people like that. They're human, right? But most of them aren't.

Yet you have no problems with government power increasing logarithmically, even though, whattaya know, the same fallible human beings are running that show too. And now they have guns, not just money. What on Earth gives you the idea that suddenly corruption, greed, and power lust are going to suddenly vanish when industry is given over to into the charge of Senators and Congressmen?

I'm not going to try and argue this point much further. Just ask yourself this question when comparing capitalist, private enterprise nations and socialist, state-run nations:

Which have had the worst records in treatment of workers, quality of life, and above all, environmental destruction? Which system has had more crime, pollution, and abuse of workers?

A capitalist nation of course, has faults, because it's made up of human beings. The capitalist system allows this to be dealt with without destroying freedom, using the minimal laws and regulations that protect individual rights and freedoms. I don't see totalitarianism, or even a "benign" mix of freedom and totalitarianism, as being an answer.

*This fake alternative argument is very common with liberals. Typical examples: "Well, if you are not for a socialized medical system, than you must want people to go without medical care," or "Well, if you don't support the current Social Security system then you must want old people to starve and die." This dumbass debate technique wouldn't normally work on a fifth-grader, but it is still the foundation of almost every argument made against Republicans by the Democratic party.