I assume you are referring to the current corporate shakeouts here. One might suggest that the fact that they are being shaken out, largely by the marketplace and stock markets rather than by any specific punitive actions by government, might indicate that maybe the system, however kludged up by government interference, still works. The vast number of large and profitable corporations that are doing just fine and being run honestly don't, of course, make much news.

Reminds me of the Great Death Penalty Debate, where countless examples of death row inmates who were found innocent and set free are given. A statistic that never seems to show up in these arguments is how many death row inmates were actually executed and later definitely proven innocent of the crime they were executed for?

Answer: none.

I didn't believe it at first either. All the anti-death-penalty people trot out the large numbers exonerated compared with those executed, and say that one must assume that someone who was executed was totally innocent of the crime of which they were convicted, but no one has yet come up with such a case.

Again, one could interpret this as meaning that for the most part, our current death penalty system with its countless checks and balances and decades of appeals may actually work as designed.

This nation will be truly capitalistic when an armed government does not have nearly absolute control over almost every aspect of economic activity. When this happens, corporations will no longer pay either bribes (from the crooked ones to wreck competition or obtain special favors), or protection money (from the honest ones to keep the government from wrecking them). These payments are currently called "campaign contributions."

We are now living in a mixed economy, with two directions to travel: full socialism, or full capitalism. While there is no magic wand that will give us a free society in one fell swoop, we can at least try to push in that direction instead of constantly pushing the other way.

And as far as learning from experience goes, I would think a century of side-by-side comparisons between capitalist and socialist societies might be marginally useful.