Atheist wrote:
The point is that capitalism, allowd to run its' course becomes a monopoly. This happened many many years ago, and in a technological age (oh, like the one we live in right at this moment) would happen in a shorter and shorter amount of time. Therefore capitalism DOESN'T actually work at all. A system that just STOPS: is hardly a system one would want to use, right?
Firstly, I'm not aware of conclusive evidence that capitalist societies will tend towards a monopoly without government intereference - what happens is very much a matter of debate. It happens in some cases - no one's saying that any capitalist country is perfect - but this doesn't mean that the economy will always go belly-up, and they wouldn't have under a different system.
Secondly, not everyone who advocates capitalism believes that there shouldn't be a government, or government intervention in the market (indeed, with no government, you wouldn't have laws upholding the private ownership of the means of production, which is the very definition of capitalism). Personally I believe that a government should intervene in order to make up for possibile deficiencies in a free market. If this is taken to mean that capitalism is broken, then every system is broken (in that I can conceive of a particular example of it where things would go bad).
Just like it can be argued that there was never a truely communist country, there hasen't been an actual capitalist country either. I would like there to be one, just to prove to all of you that it doesen't work AT ALL.
Yes, exactly - I hate it when people are always allowed to say that the communist countries weren't examples of "true" communist economies, but on the other hand they can pick holes in the US and cite them as examples of capitalism going bad.
However, it seems what you have in mind to what an actual capitalist society is differs from mine. I'd rather keep the anti-trust laws as I said - but I am against the way that governments can often be seen to help make large companies stronger (particularly the messed up copyright and patent laws). That's the reasons why I don't consider the US and other western societies to be the best conceivable example of a capitalist economy.