Capitalism is broken

[mrstickball]

ManusJustus said:

Chairman-Mao said:

Capitalism is the only economic system that gives all people an equal opportunity to succeed.

That is so much bullshit, and I hope you are only trying to bullshit others rather than having successfully bullshitted yourself.

You can make the valid argument that capitalism gives people the opportunity to succeed, but in no way does it give people equal opportunities.  On the contrary, socialism strives to give people equal opportunity, with programs like socialized education, while capitalism promotes unequal opportunity.  Surely, no sane person would make the argument that the son of a million dollar a year salary CEO who goes to private school and will inherit his father's business with he graduates has an equal opportunity with the son of a single mother living in the ghetto who is working at Wal-Mart to pay his way through college.

What is capitalistic education, again? Just curious.

In praxis, that CEO may give his son the business only to have him totally squander the business. We've seen that very often in America. Look at the Big 3 auto makers who had a lineage of ownership by the family - at some point, a son or daughter rose to power, and squandered what they had. A similar situation is taking place in Cleveland with the Cleveland Browns and the son who inherited it.

As for your argument about the single mother. That hard working youth may have been Larry Ellison who was birthed by an unwed 19 year old mother. To this day, no one knows who the father is of Mr. Ellison.

The fact is that socialism doesn't promote equality. It promotes mediocrity as strives to ensure that everyone recieves the same input, and demands the same output regardless of skill. The problem is that not all desire to be equal. Many want to squeak through life, living in mediocrity, desiring to use social programs to their own messed up benefits.

The way I see it is that socialism must come from the public, and not the government. You can have equality without government intervention in most, if not all, cases. For example, the government requires almost every American to invest in the mismanaged Social Security system. It's a horrible system that yields very little benefit for Americans. The government could instead require people to have a security program, but without it being paid into one specific system (like they do currently with SS).