>"I've also noticed that the socialist crap that is constantly spouted at protests and in other venues comes almost exclusively from either people wallowing in the luxury of a capitalist nation, or people who are the wealthy elite of a third-world nation. The people underfoot in these third-world nations know better."

There is no question that capitalism is a dynamic, effective force. This does not mean that it is a Holy Grail or without its own set of problems and potentials for excess and abuse.

The US has been blessed by the serindipity of combining democracy with capitalism. This is a case of two concurrent concepts handshaking to the benefit of both. Unfortunately, either concept can exist and have its own being (Sein--for SADI-Tech) without the other. Capitalism does just fine under a dictatorship. Democracy does not require capitalism for being. It is how concepts are combined that make all the differences.

Don't know if you have ever studied Marx or Engels or not? But, Marx wrote his dialectical materialism as a critique on capitalism. This was an attempt to cure the obvious evils of capitalism as it was in 1875 Europe. Can you say Oliver Twist time?

According to Marx, a necessary precondition to the utopian state he envisioned required that state first be capitalistic and have devolved into a monolopistic and exploitive condition. Non-capitalistic countries were never a part of this equation. Non-industrial, agricultural nations that had no capitalistic experience were not included in the club.

The "Third-World" nations you alude to just don't fit the bill. Thus your thesis that they "know better" is pretty hollow. Both the elite and the people in the impoverished nations you mention are typically suffering under a represive right-wing military oligarchy that runs a client state dependent upon the US.

Not exactly an ideal situation!