The "invisible hand" is just a reference to letting things occur naturally in a free market.

"In economics, the invisible hand, also known as the invisible hand of the market, the term economists use to describe the self-regulating nature of the marketplace, is a metaphor first coined by the economist Adam Smith."

I'm not arguing against some regulation.  Let me quote myself: "I'm not arguing for pure free market, just for something tilted more in that direction.  Mostly free market with minor regulation."

I love how you imply that stability automatically comes from regulation.  Yeah.  That's sure worked out well throughout recent and not-so-recent history.  Nevermind the easy examples, Russia and China, let's look at the US in the 1930s.  Despite the incredible amount the government grew in that decade, especially in its ability to control the economy, we still only recovered from the depression because of WWII. 

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings [wealth]; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries" - Winston Churchill

What he's trying to say is while capitalism doesn't make everyone happy, there is still wealth to be had. Socialism on the other hand yeah everything is equal but the everything is a lot less. 

Honestly do you expect inventors to go out an make new products if they won't be able to make money off of it? Do you expect people to go through 12 (or whatever it is) years of medical school to become a doctor so they can make the same money as a janitor? And if people can't make as much money who are you going to tax to pay for these nifty social programs you're promising? I could keep going but you get the point. 

There are many opportunities for this single mother to succeed.

1. First off high school (secondary school) is free in Canada so she had the opportunity to work hard and get A's which would lead to her getting a scholarship which may not pay the full tuition but at least a good part of it

2. She can apply to grants/bursaries which are paid for by various businesses and the government which favour "disadvantaged" people meaning poor people or minorities

3. She can apply for a student loan from the government which will pay up to a certain amount and she would get up to a year (i think) after she graduates to pay it back.

You can't possibly tell me this woman didn't have a chance to succeed.  

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).

ManusJustus was talking about the child of the single mother but your point still stands. The idea though is that the opportunities open to the son of the wealthy person would only be open to the poorer son through other means, grants and such alike which are there to make things equal. Without them that son would not be able to get the education that the richer son has. Oh also, where did the Canada thing come from?

There is opportunity, but no one can claim that opportunity is any where close to being equal.  The son of a rich CEO is still filthy rich, even if he is a total failure in life.  Even a driven person, like Larry Ellison, works to get to that same level, he had to put a lot of hard work in to get there whereas the wealthy heir did absolutely nothing for the same.

You kinda rambled off my point, I'll assume you admit that there is not equal opportunity in capitalism, although it is obvious that almost anyone can work their way up in life.

Investors not making products and research if they think they wont make money is precisely why we need government involvement in the economy.  No business would invest the money that the US government did in to get us into space, but now businesses know that space can be profitable with previously unknown products and technologies such as satellites.  No business would fund the Manhattan Project to obtain nuclear fission.  No business would fund a particle acceletor to discover particles that make up atoms.  No business would cut down on releasing pollutants on their own because they were solely concerned with people's health.

With a free market, society limits itself to what we think is economically feasible.  With government involvement, society is able to research new technology that may or may not lead to huge breakthroughs in science.   Government involvement is responsible for almost everything you are using right now as you read this, from your computer to your television to your cell phone to the GPS in your car, all these things are possible because some government funded scientist was conducting 'crazy' research in a lab.

Who in 1910 would have thought that Einstien's Theory of Relativity would have an impact on car sales from GPS satellites that require his discoveries to function.

Good debate...

I want to put my 2 cents in here, but then I'd have to charge all of you $5.

Capitalism is just like any system. Not perfect. It just needs to be balanced with something else, perhaps socialism. I, myself classify me as a Liberal Universal Capitalistic Socialist.

With all joking aside, this survey is not all too surprising, as with the global ecomomic recession, when things are bad, people see things as bad. When things are going well, people see things as good.

It would have been interesting to see what system they think would have done better in the survey.

Capitalism is broken because 90% of the world's wealth is controlled by 10% of the world's population. So the rest of the 90% of the world have to make do with only 10% of the world's wealth.
Capitalism allows for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. Free market capitalism is totally out of control and it is to blame for the global economic crisis.
Socialism allows for a more equal society and distributes the wealth more evenly amongst the people.

I've never seen Chairman Mao used as an argument against democracy before. That's... something.

If you're saying that some limits need to be placed on people's political decisions, I agree. I also think that some limits need to be placed on people's economic decisions, because people don't always make smart or good economic decisions. Most of the time I don't have a problem with that, but if they're making decisions on behalf of a lot of people (such as bankers), or if a large aggregate make the same bad choice (taking out a mortgage on new house on the assumption that real estate values always rise), consequences can be dire and afflict people who didn't make bad choices (people who just want a house to live in and can afford one).

Can we please stop the bullshit about equating regulation with a command economy, though? A very solid majority of people in that poll in the OP asked for more regulations, not for communism.