Alright, well Mafoo asked me to come in here and give my opinion. I'll do my best.
I'm in between Rocketpig and scifiboy on this. I'll be more specific.
1) I disagree with rocketpig that things have not changed at all when you look at things at the core social level. But I do agree with rocketpig that many people think things changed more than they actually have. I mean you can call people working at minimum wage jobs and those who are convicted felons and can't move up in the system glorified slaves. But it is equally ludicrous to say that nothing has changed at all.
For instance, the average person is much less easily abused by the government and private citizens with more social power than him than he was in the past. There are many reasons for this.
a) Bill of rights and increasingly favorable forms of legal protection from government abuse of power. I won't get into this in an economic sense, but more in a human rights sense. The government cannot just wholesale kill people like it used to be able to 1000's of years ago without people saying anything. It just doesn't work like that anymore. The government can also not take your real property without paying for it anymore (real property = real estate). There are plenty of other examples too.
b) Civil laws. These have existed since before the Code of Hammurabi, but they are much more powerful now. Poor people and the average citizen can recover damages in monetary and other forms (like injunctions, etc.) much more easily than they could in the past. The legal system has provided an incredibly powerful tool.
c) Social "nets" like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. These have undoubtedly increased the quality of life of the average person.
And the same is true just in the sense of the bourgeoisie (middle class) vs. the social elite. You didn't really have a middle class until the 17th century. This has completely changed the dynamics of power in a society.
But I do agree that at the end of the day, the few dominate the many. That much has not changed.
2) Striving for some kind of utopia. I certainly don't think this is an ignoble thing to do. I mean we should always be striving towards something in society. A person's life isn't worth very much if they have no goals, let alone a society that hs no goals. But a true utopia is impossible, and in reality can be a terrible thing. One person's utopia is another person's nightmare. And human nature isn't lofty enough I hate to admit to really achieve any kind of utopia. But that doesn't mean that things cannot get better. And it also doesn't mean that things cannot get worse.
3) None of us are 100% capitalist or 100% socialist. We are all just somewhere in the middle. Some of us are more towards one end than the other. And in reality capitalism and socialism aren't diametric opposites. They share more things than many people would admit.
You are entitled to have whatever position you want as long as you can rationally articulate why your position is a good one. But that also means you have to be able to defend your position when someone else points out the natural consequences of that position. And sometimes you need to be able to defend your position when it is taken to the logical extreme as well.
This is mainly why I disagree with Mafoo. I don't think his ideals are somehow inferior to mine. I just think that the natural consequences of his positions when translated into how they would manifest themselves in society are much more undesirable than my own. And I think the logical extremes of his position are much more unfavorable than the logical extremes of my own. For instance, I don't advocate any kind of tax bracket higher than 40%. Above that limit, I think the revenue benefits for the government are negligible and even counter-productive while the rich are also being unduly burdened.
And I also think that a hands-off approach to capitalism is naive in this day in age when the economy is about 100x more complex than it was when laissez faire capitalism was invented. I think it is foolish and downright dangerous to simply let the market do as it pleases. I'm not suggesting the government should direct the market. But I am suggesting that the government should put firm boundaries around within and without the market.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
