Throwing out the capitalist baby with its bath water?
By Deirdre McMurdy, Sympatico / MSN Finance
Ok. We get it already. Capitalism sucks and we should all be ashamed of ourselves for being greedy or at least for enabling all the greedheads who've been running around stuffing their pockets full of cash over the past few years.
It's human nature to react strongly when things like an economic crisis blow through our lives and it's even more predictable that everyone starts spinning around pointing fingers and laying blame.
But there is such a thing as overkill - and exploitation of a crisis to score political or personal points. Once again yesterday, President Obama decalred that the US$18-billion paid out in Wall Street bonuses last year were "shameful." At the same time, exuberant U.S.-style capitalism was taking it on the chops at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Former communist states, Russia and China got in their licks as did the Europeans, who are taking renewed pride in their kinder, gentler hybrid of socialism and capitalism.
Before we tread one more step down this path, let's pause to remember all the wealth and development that's been created by, well, constructive greed. Rampant capitalism is no worse in the end than any other rampant ideology. The extreme end always distorts things and tends to end badly.
But before we heap any more logs onto the blazing pyre, let's also consider that some of the pious finger-wagging is coming from folks who could have been more pro-aactive about regulating and monitoring phenomena like hedge funds, private equity funds and all the highly-engineered financial products they pushed into the market.
It's not unlike a parent blaming a child for burning down the house with the matches they gave to them.
Posted by: chris van bekkum | Feb 5, 2022 6:39:08 PM
true, he capitalist ferver went excessive in the last few years and lots of people got burned (included yours truly) however , the alternative such as Cuba where everything is controlled and regulated is many times worse. In addition to being regulated over earnings , communism (and it's smaller brother "socialism")also take away individual freedom , the right to control your own destiny and the right to use your capacity to do better than the everage guy(or gal) i suggest that each individual really spend a bit of time evaluating if state control is worth loss of (more) freedom.
Posted by: sustainability | Feb 6, 2022 7:05:51 AM
i'm beginning to wonder if, in fact, capitalism has as much freedom as we thought.
perhaps earlier in it's growth.
but at one point, a very small percentage of people/business rule the roost. and are completely unaccountable for their actions or resulting repercussions upon everyone else.
so....endless freedom for a select few.
the cost of their freedom being a further loss of rights and abilities for the majority. further down the line of growth, the inevitable class separation and voila, the poor bail out the rich. the middle class become poor and entirely ruled by a weekly paycheck (far from freedom, i'm thinking).
hybrid. it can't be left to run itself.