Capitalism and free markets are two entirely different things. A market is just any place buyers and sellers get together and trade among themselves. Pricing in a market where no one has control of enough of the stuff being traded to set the price is totally market-determined: stock and commodity markets are the two largest scale examples. Capitalism separates the owner from the operator of a company, and limits the owner's risk. Immediately that you do this you make possible very large entities with thousands upon thousands of owners. Because the entities are large, they also can influence strongly the prices charged for their products and the prices paid for the materials and labor that go into the making of those products. Now you no longer have a "free market", but rather a market controlled by a few large players. The fewer the number, the more likely a cartel or cartel-like pricing becomes. Investors in large companies ask, among other things, about the "barriers to entry" to the business in question. What they're actually evaluating is the extent to which the company has pricing power over its products and how much of that power it can expect to keep in the future. If you go into a bazaar in the Middle East looking to buy spices for instance, the price you can negotiate will come down to supply, demand, the amount of information you have about the prices, and your skill as a negotiator. That's a free market. Those markets predated capitalism. Walk into an Apple store and get an iPad and you have to take the price Apple is charging. You have no control over that price. Apple charges what it thinks it can, and that price is determined by the fact they have a monopoly over iPads. You can get an Android tablet, but that's somewhat different. iPad prices will be influenced by what an Android goes for, but it's an indirect influence. Ditto for Androids. Arguably an Android manufacturer is more subject to the whims of supply and demand and your skill as a negotiator of price because the barriers to entry are much lower. But as soon as you have capitalism and large-scale enterprises you get barriers to entry that create pricing power for the producers or, in the case of a large retailer like Wal-Mart, for the seller, and you no longer have a free market, as the consumer is always weaker than either the producers or the sellers and can't negotiate price the way he could before capitalism came along. The power a capitalist enterprise has extends into politics. If a company is large enough in its area of operation, it will dominate the politics of that place: Kellogg in Battle Creek, Kodak in Rochester, and so on. The only check on this power is a government that is larger than the enterprise: a very large city will have a government large enough to keep the local power brokers somewhat in check, so that large cities tend to stay large since they can avoid being overwhelmed by any single interest, thus the stability of the population in places like NY and LA, while second cities tend to have one boom and then slowly fade out as they succumb to the parochial interest of a single dominant enterprise, like Battle Creek, Rochester, Detroit, you name it. A state government will be less influenced by the local capitalist power broker, and the federal government even less. Hence the incessant calls for limits to the power of the federal government you see everywhere on ET, since everyone here (less a tiny percentage) deludes himself into thinking the markets he trades are the same thing as the markets he enters as a consumer or that a worker enters as a laborer. This is obviously not true if you think about it for even a moment, but there you are.
ttoal failure? highest quality of living on earth. companies with trillions of free cash. Apple. Sillicon valley. new york, one of the most expensive real estate. well, if you're in idaho and have no job, yeah
Capitalism to work properly needs free markets - simple fact. The expansion of regulations and the blending of governments with corporate entities degrades Capitalism and a free market environment. There needs to be a balance that is away from a totally un-regulated market but farther away from a fully regulated one.
Corporations cannot be made to pay taxes, they can donate to politicians and get tax breaks. Poor people cannot be made to pay taxes. The self employed cannot be made to pay taxes if they want to take the steps to shelter their money and even they can donate to a politician and get an exemption from the income taxes. You should read the Tax Codes of the IRS, it is just tax exemptions for donators. That leaves only the working stiff who gets a paycheck and has his tax monies confiscated ahead of him receiving them. Public sector money comes largely from working stiffs and you are saying that the economy is better off because the public sector can create working stiff jobs by taxing working stiffs? Stick around and see how that works out, it's ugly now but give it more time...
Hilarious stupidity - go back to licking your masters black boots. I know - you want a corrupt government to take care of you and that would be better - just lost!
No having warlords and the modern equivalent of barbarians is much better than a government. How foolish.
If you look closer, the socialist policies both in US and Western Europe brought us in the mess we are. Capitalism is self adaptive; socialism is not. Don't blame those who know how to make money, blame those who know just how to spend them. Show me a socialist country, any time in the history, where people are happy, and which does well economically following socialist principles! Nada. And it's true what others observed, lighnintrade you're a moron. Go and live in Cuba, Russia, China, North Korea for a few months with nothing brought from outside!
Everyone knows at least one way to make easy money. How many sellouts are very skilled? Some of us have morals. I'm a moron? You're the idiot listing Communist countries. Try Democratic Socialism as a solution. If you're so stupid you think everyone against Capitalism in it's current state is pro-Communism you're too foolish for me to waste my time on.
There is no such thing as capitalism in Anglo-Saxon nations. UK was established by money men, bought opposition generals and installed a German to royalty to serve as puppet hundreds years ago; Launched colonization war to distract British peoples' attention. Free market/capitalism are only fictitious to serve real purpose of manipulating money supply and turning economy in cycles of boom and bust; then bottom fishing real assets with printed fiat money.