Capitalism

5 responses to “Capitalism”

1. Scott Erb | November 22, 2011 at 9:47 am | Reply

   Capitalism only works if you can prevent the winners from rigging the game so that they keep winning. That happens if they get more resources (power), more information, or are better positioned. Government must try to keep an even playing field, meaning not only the same rules for everyone, but to make sure that the “winners” don’t use their advantage to have an upper hand as the game continues. Government can’t do that perfectly — the winners will always have an advantage, and pass that on to their kids. But it can work to assure things like education, health care, basic standards of living, help for children, so that opportunity can be reasonably equal. You’ll never get true equal opportunity — the winners will always have some advantage — but you can strive to have a system where actual work and innovation determine outcomes rather than the situation one is born into. Unfortunately, right now the situation you’re born into is a better indicator of future success than anything else.

   • Henry | November 22, 2011 at 11:49 am | Reply

     Scott,
     Topic: government trying to keep an even playing field.

     My father was from a large family. When one of the older kids started beating up on the young ones, grandma had a solution. She punished EVERYONE. That did two things. It taught the older kids to respect the younger kids, and it taught the younger kids to NOT go running to their mother if they were being hassled. More and more I see adults running to our government for help because they believe that they are being mistreated.

     • nickgb | November 25, 2011 at 5:54 am | Reply

       So the younger kids learned not to run for help, then why would the older kids stop picking on them? The story doesn’t make much sense to me.

       Meanwhile, whatever your analogy is, I think you need to flesh it out more. Even in very broad libertarian strokes, the role of government is to step in when a private citizen mistreats another private citizen. The arguments come down to the definition of “mistreat”.

   • pino | November 22, 2011 at 8:19 pm | Reply

     Capitalism only works if you can prevent the winners from rigging the game so that they keep winning.

     This is true; a market is not more free when the rich and powerful can rig it in their advantage.

2. Henry | November 22, 2011 at 12:09 pm | Reply

   The following link shows a beautiful money chart. Sooooo cool.

   http://xkcd.com/