Samira wrote:
Okay, I'll stipulate that capitalism may be a normal outgrowth of a barter system. But why assume that it's the best possible system?
Because it's the system people naturally choose to use, barring some external force (like a government) forcing them to do things differently). I'd make the same argument if we were talking about why certain methods of holding and swinging a golf club work best and you were arguing that by opposing legislation requiring that golfers hold their clubs differently I was "protecting" <insert name of natural golf hold here>. No. I'm just not advocating that we artificially mandate something different than what people use, and acknowledging that people use the system they use because it works best for them.
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There's no inherent virtue in it. We don't assume that the first light bulbs were the best possible light bulbs.
It has the inherent virtue of not requiring anyone to try to figure out and enforce a different system. If a ball is rolling down a hill, I may not know if the result is going to be better or worse than if I run over and stop it, but barring some kind of strong evidence to the contrary, it's reasonable to *not* intercede. One choice requires that I do nothing and let natural events play themselves out. The other requires that I spend effort and time changing that natural course. Unless I know that the change I'm going to make is absolutely "better", my choice should be obvious.
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I don't see the virtue in not improving an economic system.
But here's the problem. You made a big statement about me and capitalism. Where is the statement showing that some other form of economics is "better"? You talk about "improving" an economic system, but I have yet to see sufficient proof that more than the slightest regulation of abuses of a free market system ends out improving things. There is, however, tons of evidence that the more command an economy becomes, the less efficient it becomes and the worse those laboring within it end out.
I fully acknowledge that there is some happy medium to be had here. I'm not a complete "hands off" advocate. However, I think that our starting point should be not to intercede without strong evidence of a better result. Unfortunately, most of the arguments for interceding revolve around first demonizing capitalism as a whole, pointing out just the worst cases, and then insisting that we should do whatever is at hand instead. What is usually missing is a good solid argument for why the particular proposed action is better than the alternative. It's a common trick that I see a lot, especially by the Left of our political spectrum. They don't want to argue *for* the thing they're proposing, but rather spend all their time arguing up the negatives of the thing they want to replace. But at the end of the day, we have to choose to do one or the other, right? How about we look at the choices, assess them honestly, and then move forward from there?
Broad proclamations about "capitalism" don't really help us much.
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You, and a few others, seem to resist not only because it would cost more in taxes (which would be largely realized in benefits, as happens with roads and other public works), but because it would be wrong. That's the part I don't see.
I think you're mistaking my position for one of absolutism. The base condition of taxation is that it is wrong. We're supposed to start out not being taxed for anything and then make a case for each individual thing and the need to pay for it with taxes. I have repeatedly acknowledged that we may decide as a society that the benefits of health care (for example) are worth the costs. However, as I pointed out above, we need to make that argument. What I'm seeing instead is a movement to simply convince people that there are no costs, and that taxes don't really represent a burden on their liberty. That's "wrong". Taxes are always a burden to liberty. They always infringe people's rights.
The argument should not be about whether or not we lose some liberty by doing this, but whether the benefits of what we're proposing are worth that loss. However, I've almost never seen the case for socialized medicine presented this way. Have you? Instead, we get arguments that by providing health care, we're somehow improving people's liberty. We're not. We're improving their lives, while limiting their freedom. That may be a price we're willing to pay, but then lets make that decision honestly.
I've repeated this argument many times, yet no one seems to acknowledge it. For me (and many conservatives), it's not about whether it's "good" to help people gain health care they can't afford on their own. It's about the fact that it is "bad" to simply seize people's property because we've convinced a fair share of the country that there's no real infringement of liberty to do so, or that the liberty is somehow balanced out by the good we're doing with the money. That's what conservatives are worried about. Because each time we do this, we erode the principles of freedom and liberty this country was founded on. Each time, we build a precedent for the next time. Each time, we're strengthening the idea that individuals don't really have a right to their own property, but that it should be used to provide for the collective.
That's a concept that is directly at odds with those which most Americans believe to be true, but they're being slowly taught step by step to accept it anyway. Each time, it's for the "good" of whatever cause is in front of us. But no matter how worthy each cause may be, it's the trend in terms of our liberties and how we view liberty itself that is troubling.
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And it's interesting to me that you use the phrase "failing" when you describe it:
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It is telling that you would phrase it that way though. So failing to help someone is equivalent to infringing their rights, and failing to place restrictions on capitalism is "protecting" capitalism.
Not that I said any such thing, at least as far as the first clause goes. That's pure straw man, right there.
You may not have directly said it yourself. I honestly don't remember. However, that *is* a commonly expressed opinion and one of the core ones with which I'm arguing. Are you saying that you don't believe that failing to provide someone with free health care is an infringement of their rights? Cause I've been saying this for years now, and most of the forum disagrees with me, and I don't recall you once speaking up and saying that I was right on this.
Now's your chance to set the record straight I suppose...
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But yes, failing to restrict capitalism is in fact protecting capitalism. And failure.
Only if one looks purely at result and not action. And only if we accept your premise that capitalism leads to failure. Given the vast numbers of examples of ways in which capitalism has directly benefited you, me, and everyone else in this country, I'm not sure how you can make that argument.
You're typing on a machine that exists purely because of capitalism. Think about that.
Edited, Apr 21st 2010 6:37pm by gbaji 
