Wow! Thank you for your detailed response. Allow me to just clarify my position here: I am not saying capitalism is wrong, it is a good tool, but if it is the only tool and left to itself, it’s effects on society become extreme. With regards to libertarianism: If everyone can determine their own actions, then why not destroy statues that you didn’t want built with your tax-money (it’s an argument; i am not saying one should).
Wirh regards to big money going to large companies, you address this by educating me in the Amazon business-model. Thank you, for that, I was unclear. I was addressing the point that a Big Pharma can develop a specific cancer cure and decide to market it as a Roll-Royce product, i.e. not for the masses. A business has 1 objective: maximizing shareholders return. If that is achieved by marketing to the few at an exhorbitant price, then the business should do it (yes including the extra PR-costs that this will require). Also if a business can polute a river in India with a few bribes, and so cut its production costs, it should do it. Unless, regulations, laws and penalties prevent that. So we need laws to manage corporations, we need taxes and we need people to voice their opinions when they feel they are wronged. Sometimes that can escalate. The Boston Tea-Party was regarded as a ‘mob’ once. George Washington a terrorist. Change is not something endorsed by the powers that be. Look at Obama, he campaigned on Change and didn’t change that much (albeit ObamaCare with all its flaws made it possible for 20 million more Americans to have health-insurance).
The point I make is if one let’s capitalism go it’s own way without limitations it becomes ugly. If we let everyone act in their self-interest then the ones with all the money can distort social cohesion to a degree where most people are not in a position to pursue their liberty and contribute to society.
I don’t have a ‘solution’. I think all we can do is discuss, be rational and make an effort to discover the weaknesses in our own thinking and perceptions. I don’t have the ‘wisdom’. I just criticized some aspects of your arguments.
I finish with 2 observations:
- That half of the US population has as its objective to bring the US down seems a bit of a stretch. Why would they (the dems)? It would also contradict your argument that the US is such a great country. In what great country would half the population be unhappy and want to bring it down?
2. ‘if you don’t like it here then get out’ is a very poor binary argument. A more nuanced option might be: if there are things that you don’t like here, why not discuss them and try to change them?
Thank you for your original article and your detailed reply and I hope you don’t perceive my criticism as confrontational or personal.
