You know, Nick Hanauer is right.
It does take more than a bit of deification.
He's an infomercial hack who give capitalists a bad name.
What you know of as capitalism wasn't actually coined or developed until Adam Smith in 1776.
What I know of as capitalism include merchants who go back 10,000 years and beyond.
Capitalism simply means that the economic system is owned by individuals who work for their own private profit.
No it means the opportunity
and freedom to pursue economic betterment as the reward for utilizing their efforts and skills at providing goods and services where there is a demand. A boy running a paper route is a capitalist.
Communism for example is where the government owns most production facilities and attempts to the best of its ability to provide for its people as a whole rather than having them hash it out
.
Dumping risk and reward in the process--and that's the best scenario. All dictators are socialists of whatever flavor.
Socialism simply means that we are taxed and our tax money goes to social projects for the good of people. The terms aren't conflicting except for Capitalism and Communism. There is also Feudalism, Mercantilism, and a number of archaic methods of economics that don't fit into any of the above categories.
Please note I've pointed out that technically all governments are socialist, but the term has come to be associated with heavy government involvement which is more in the interest of the elites than in the people they demagogue. Feudalism is just a previous word that amounts to socialism, and mercantilism for capitalism.
Those are all socialistic in nature. Anarchy simply means that there is no government to rule. It doesn't have to mean chaos and you can have socialism or capitalism in anarchy.
If there is no government rule, then there is no protection of property or other human rights which inevitably leads to chaos. But true anarchy is also a vacuum which will usually be filled, chaotically, and with an oppressive government. In sparsely populated areas, families or small tribes sometimes survive and thrive in isolation. I think that's the utopia so many socialists long for but is no longer available unless you want to live in Antarctica or some small island.
Fascism is authoritarian government that has all the power. The inverse is a government that is controlled by people.
Any autonomous centralized government will eventually have all the power, and the people will sell it to them for a song (re: B. Franklin).
It doesn't. It has been painted that way by those individuals who run propaganda to cut social programs so they can reduce tax rates.
A socialized healthcare system would be the only major thing that I would have in the US be changed. That and drastically improve our education system, especially our secondary education system.
What, give them more government control so they can better inculcate their propaganda and increase their control?
In a Planned economy, the 'signals' to motivate economic activity are derived from the planning authorities. In a Market economy, the motivation for economic activity is derived from price signals.
Micromanaging economic forces has always worked so well in the past, by committee especially.
Money is not the only incentive because man has an intrinsic desire to work, but it is crippled by a society which degrades human beings into a position of servitude where they are an appendage to machines or to desks.
Better to pay them not to work then, with the countries where laborers do work picking up the slack of the slackers.
The problem with this is it emphasizes the decision making power of persons such as Stalin and Mao. (I'm going to touch Hitler as he's not my problem).
Yes, Fascist national-socialists (Nazis) were at odds with communist socialism in WWII. But then those systems always breed dictators.
ALWAYS.
Look at the fascist dictator we have grabbing power as fast as he can here in the US, culminating a coup that was started back in the '30s--with all the useful idiots cheering due to their them vs. us indoctrinated mentality.
In reality, it took the willful co-operation of millions of people in the state apparatus to actually execute there decisions. Socialism does not therefore represent the concentration of power by individuals, but the mass mobilization of the powers of ordinary people.
Is that why tens of millions died under socialist government in the 20th century?--all that concentration of power was fatal.
To quote Franklin D. Roosevelt:"necessitous men are not free men".
Exactly, like all the Russians that died needing food that Stalin kept from them.
Capitalism promote the freedom only of those who own the property to act. those who do not own property under capitalism are not in any sense free, and whilst they may not be legally dependent on other persons as happens in slavery, there remain economically dependent on capitalists through wage slavery.
Life isn't fair. some are born with more than others: talent, looks, health, money, drive....etc. When you negate those advantages, all that's left are the megalomaniacs with all but the elite much worse off.
It is only "too much regulation" if you argue that the market regulates itself by competition. Whilst Government can pursue a common objective, their remains an element of competition within it's own structures which holds it to account. it is simply that competition is not the primary mechanism for directing economic activity under a communist system.
Bureaucrats compete! You admitted yourself that's bogus.
I feel obliged to take this one up. The nature of the state is determined by it's economic system. the state represents the superstructure of a society rather than determining it independently of the economy. Fascism was built on a capitalist economic system defined by systematic concentration of corporate power, aided by the state which actively suppressed Communist, Socialist and Trade union movements. Fascism was not socialist, but was capitalist.
Exactly again. It, like the US, started out a a capitalist entity. But the corporations were corrupted by the power government had to regulate them and forced their economic and political capitulation to the government like a bunch of sheep who were happy to be well paid useful idiots. And the people were whooped up into a holy war on the wealthy, increasing the power of the socialists exponentially.
Communism, taken to its logical conclusion, would have the world's population living on $5000 a year--the average income worldwide. But since the leaders will have to be compensated according to their "need", the rest will just have to be "able" to live on a lot less than that. You know, let them eat cake.
There were no jobs before capitalism?
Pretty much, no. Most were self-employed capitalists with only their families to work with, or slaves.
Nope, just slavery in exchange for goods or currency.
And currency didn't really come into it's own until the industrial revolution.
