:
: "Anarcho-capitalism" is self-refuting, a logical impossibility. It's a contradiction like "square circle" so it can't be discovered in any world.How about "compassionate conservative?"
: As I've mentioned before, the government exists for the long-term survival of capitalism itself, and as such sometimes enact policies which come into conflict with the short-term interests/wishes of individual capitalists.
Actually, I would say that governments tend to exist only for their own perpetuation.
However, being the libertarian that I am, I like the think of the governments role being only that of protection of rights.
: Hey, Dave: I don't agree that the bear-bones definition of capitalism is the only one we should use, because my point was that Betty might play by the free-market rules but the corporations don't. Still, they use the Betty story as a microcosm, and that's not the way they do it at all. This story is pretty much straight out of my Economics 101 class I took before I switched to English literature. And I heard pretty much the same thing from the THREE other economics courses I took as a note-taker for Notes 'n Quotes, a service for truant freshmen for whom I worked to get equal money. And Milton Friedman won the Nobel prize saying pretty much the same thing--conflating the story of small-business owners with capitalism itself.
I agree that we shouldn't use only the barebones defitition. We should, however, make sure that we use other ones with discretion and not equate the two.
I think the Betty story works but you shouldn't look at it as the end all of economics. For instance, replace Betty with a group of five people with an aggragate seed capital of $250,000, certainly more than Betty, but not nearly as much as many others. I think the point of the Betty scenario is to depict the transition for worker to capitalist. Just like I pointed out (a long time ago) how the M-C-M/C-M-C models are not systems that people get alotted in for the rest of eternity.
I am surprised Friedman got the Nobel prize for that..isn't the Nobel Prize racket run by a bunch of Swiss and Norwegian commies?
Just remember, life isn't fair--it's laissez-faire! (get it? fair/faire? Thought you guys would like that one).
None.
