Your Granma's Capitalism

Since I don't think very much, I like to wander around looking for things by people who do think, then read them, then sit back and wonder what is wrong with it all.

One prominent failure of the so-called intellectual and educated people is this business of substituting an icon for a reality. In this case, an argument about capitalism and socialism uses hackneyed, worn-out iconic concepts of the economic-political systems involved, shuffles them like a deck of marked cards, and puts it all back together with a "ta-da!"
How boring it all is.

http://newledger.com/2009/02/kevin-rudds-new-socialism/

TNL Features - MarketWednesday, February 4th, 2009

Kevin Rudd’s New Socialism

by Francis Cianfrocca
 

"Here’s the problem: you simply can’t eliminate the rewards that accrue to talent, industry and luck. If you try, you get Maoism or Soviet communism, endless misery, and political evil."

 
Again, the cute and engagingly jejune attempt to believe that capitalism rewards talent, industry, and luck...one should say "good" luck; the fruits of life are as unequal as the people themselves are unequal in their gifts, industry, and propensity for "good luck".
 
From our special vantage of 2010, we know there is a great deal more to Capitalism than that. We know that capitalism, like any other form of economico-politico-force & compulsion, rewards also according to the unequal conspiracies, schemes and treasons of the devious:  riches to those with a talent for enriching themselves at others expense, industrious at conniving at unfair practices, and punishing those with the "bad luck" to be born poor and to endure in that state.
 
Capitalism is also grifters and lobbyists helping their cronies, depriving those in need of resources, and the rule of the oblivious rich. In a word, it is the same as any Socialism in Russia we have ever known. Communism died because it thought it could beat Capitalism at its own game.