Reply #95: Glen Fiddich [View All]

[Fovea]

is a watered down version of anhydrous ethanol.

Capitalism as you, yourself describe it is a very watered down version of what Milton Friedman would describe,
or Adam Smith, for that matter.

In fact, what you call capitalism, most would call a mixed system. They exist along a spectrum, from almost fascist to almost marx-mao-castro levels of central economic control.

Soviet Communism was a bastardized version of what Marx describes.
Social Democracies are a far cry from what Lenin cobbled together.

The problem is that these terms you use are both terms of art in political science, and vices in a long playing right wing morality play.
You are tending to use them in the latter way. Using the specter of communism as a boogie man. I am living in a nation that suspended habeas corpus and read its citizen's email without a thought of due process, and you are red baiting? I, for example do not think that workers should control the means of production, but I damn well think they should not be wage slaves either.
They should have all the tools of legal, peaceful collective bargaining at their disposal in any shop bigger than your living room.

Does that make me a member of the Red Army? Of course not, though being able to sing the internationale in slavic would be suspicious.

Let's deal with this on a less dramatic level. There are some really valid things that are government business. Functions that extend the benefits of human society upon all. Like the gentle rain and summer sun, the benefits of human society rightly fall on the virtuous and the foolish. To do else would require more than our duty to our species and our conscience should allow, no? Those things are at least as dear as a 600 ship navy, because without them, what besides the fortunes of the few are we protecting? Paying for those functions can occur via several mechanisms. One of those is taxation; another is tariff. Yet another is state management of a specific resource for the public good.

If you think the way to go is a straight flat income tax, then you have skewed the game very favorably to those who enjoy massive capital gains. Take away inheritance tax, and you just loaded your family in the SUV and took the entrance ramp for the Interstate To Serfdom(tm).

I advocate constraints on massive wealth because I do not think that a republic is well served by having a familial overloardship. Aristocracy cannot sustain, and it is a brutal form of governance. Democracies flourish best in a flat linear distribution of wealth and a uniform availability of opportunity. At least so far the EU seems to be verifying this in the real world.

Like my SIG line says...