:Rockcliff : Every defect which the capitalists can point to in socialism can also be found in capitalism.Gee: The lets talk 'defects'
:Rockcliff : It is in the interests of the monopolistic capitalists to maximize their freedom by minimizing the freedom of everybody else.
Gee: And its in the interest of their competitors to offer choices, the interest of a 'consumer' to select those things he believes will be the best according to his ability and willingness trade value or them.
DDN: This would be a good point if competitors were free to offer substantialy different choices in most markets and consumers were consequently free to vote with their dollar. But neither is the case anymore than an inmate in a state prison is free to have whatever he wants for dinner each night. This is "the big lie" pro-capitalists seem unable to rise above i.e. that economies like U.S. are "FREE" markets. They are far far far from free. If they were free I'd be able to purchase any one of a number of vehicles that ran on something other than fossil fuels, cereal boxes would look different from one another and be sold at different prices, 99% of the food in grocery stores wouldn't be processed, synthetic, genetically engineered crap, and I'd be able to easily find shampoos and other household products that weren't tested by torturing animals. The availabilty of choices in a given market is controlled via our government by whomever has the dominant share of that market. That's not free at all; That's just "capitalist totalitarianism" as someone else here recently put it. I don't think true free market capitalism can exist. I think any capitalist system eventually must degenerate into a mind cotrolled totalitarian state where there is only the ILLUSION of choice. I think this is an inevitable result inherent in one of its basic tenets: that MY gain has to be founded on YOUR loss.
Let's get down to brass tacks. At the very least, in markets where there is, or could be, enough product for everyone, and especially where such products are essential for living, these markets should be thoroughly and completely socialized - we should not be, and do not need to be, competing for such things. There's plenty of food for all 6 billion of us. There's enough materials for everyone to have permanent home. Even many modern appliances only need to be purchased ONCE instead of over and over again if we were all focused together on how to make the sturdiest and most economical washer and dryer instead of worrying about which 5 of us were going to become billionaires. Most people in the U.S. spend their lives laboring to make junk so that they can afford to replace the junk they've already purchased with newer junk. "Lucy, eeets so reediculus." That's what free enterprise and capitalism have brought us to: a perpetual 9 to 5 coffee achieving Dilbert hell stuck on the spin cycle.
