by Ben Huh » Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:36 pm
Capitalism is not mutually exclusive to a military state. China has been both communist and capitalist in the last 60 years and they are as authoritarian as it gets for a modernized nation.
As for capitalism being a tool to manage a crisis, what then are other forms of government and economies? Wasn't the entire idea behind socialism/communism to manage the crisis of class warfare and income inequality? Liberalism can exist within both forms of economic structure, it simply relies on those in power to do the right thing by their people. Sadly, they most of the time do not. The systems for the most part are not the failure, it is the people that run the system. Government and economies are not entities that run themselves, free of human corruption and alas they are beholden to the people that make them up and enforce them. Capitalism is not this maniacal evil that you think it is, nor is socialism one either. People can achieve great things in a consumer based economy such as capitalism and just because you may work for someone else for a living, it does not make you a slave. Slaves don't make wages and I'm sure the millions of real slaves would be rightly offended when a liberal populist making $10/hr at Starbucks gripes about "slave wages." This isn't to say that there are not systems in place that can hinder liberalism and personal achievement in the United States, and I'll even go as far as to agree that a major problem with modern liberalism is that it wants one thing but enforces legislation that does the exact opposite.
..."if the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of a divine reward, then brother, that person is a piece of shit."