I don’t think that “super capitalists” are intentionally acting immoral, but laboring under the delusion that their wealth has come from some personal genius or providing services to the community, rather than cutthroat business skill and negotiation which most people at the top deal with, not production of goods and services. The myth that “hard work” automatically leads to money pretty conveniently justifies those rolling in it.

I don’t think we really disagree fundamentally on this but I didn’t do a great job of explaining my point of view above.

Oh, and by the way “rabid” means “fervent,” it may have been more correct for me to say that Orwell was rabidly anti-totalitarian (including Communism), and “shortsighted” is only a figurative reference to eyesight and hopefully not any personal insult :). I don’t think that morality is ambiguous or “shades of gray,” though things are usually a great deal more subtle or at least different than we initially make them out to be.

Please note my reference to the year 1913 and the loss of the free market system. Then read the following quote from Thomas Jefferson.

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

Interesting statistic I heard is that Freddie and Fannie own over 50% of the mortgages in the US. But I need to validate that one.

I believe in free markets and competition and low barriers to entry to allow markets to stay free.

I don’t believe in super capitalists like John D. Rockefeller Sr. who said, “competition is sin.”

Free markets are not bad. They are good. Capitalism without virtue (honesty, respect, hard-work, etc.) is as evil as communism.

John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

I interpret Adams quote to apply to all aspects of life – political, economic, etc.

Take a look at America today where corruption and immorality invades almost all aspects of our lives.

It’s also interesting to note how super capitalists fund communist-socialist movements. Perhaps there is a symbiotic relationship there.

A good example today is George Soros, who made billions off of shorting currencies and then funds organizations like the Tides Foundation that does things like promote socialist ideas and produce videos like “The Story of Stuff”

To view everything is shades of gray is kind of wishy-washy.

Still, thinking of government as the only source of tyranny is kind of shortsighted in my opinion. At the time of the inception of the United States, interstate businesses were federally prohibited until the oil barons figured out how to skirt that law. Clearly some regulation was compatible with constitutional government. I happen to believe that a government that doesn’t regulate business merely enables the already-powerful to gain more power and wealth. A free market can’t really handle globalism, and unchecked “capitalism” is merely oppression by the suits rather than by the gun or taxation. Allowing too much power into too few hands jeopardizes the ability of all to pursue life, liberty and happiness and leads to a self-serving corporatocracy as bad as any government. The new era of arriving technology has the capability to lead us into a populist golden age or a restrictive power structure of a privileged few, and I’m hoping that we’ll be able to have a government responsible enough to deal with that and put the people first.

The goal of some corporate bureaucrats is to create a reality where they have the hiring power, the cash and the power, and leave the people with no freedom at all. Government can’t allow our freedom to be taken away by any means. As the quote from the clip says “Without law, there can be no freedom.” businessmen can cause an order of degree more damage than petty thugs, and ruin a great deal more lives in the process; law ought to address this. Destroying the health of Americans in the pursuit of profits is the same as mugging them and ought to be policed in the same way.

Anyway, that’s my two cents. I hope it makes sense. I would much rather be “poor” in a free market society than “richer” or more well-off in a socialist one, though I do subscribe to the idea that as wrong as Marx was about the benefits of Communism, he had a lot to say about unchecked capitalism that we ought to consider. I favor a free-market system, which we barely have now due to globalization and corporate exploitation, not just in the U.S. but worldwide.

What is “weighted capitalism?” How about “weighted socialism?”

I use a different political spectrum than most.

George Barnard Shaw joined the Fabian Society in 1884 and wrote the “Fabian Essays in Socialism” He was also a strong supporter of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany.

In practice what’s the difference in Socialism, Communism, or even Fascism? They all advocate total government control and result in a ruling elite and loss of individual liberty.

Walter Williams recently wrote, “… the reason why the world’s leftists give the world’s most horrible murderers a pass is because they sympathize with their socioeconomic goals, which include government ownership and/or control over the means of production. In the U.S., the call is for government control, through regulations, as opposed to ownership.”

Like Ezra Taft Benson, I put socialists and communists in the same camp.

What is the difference between an anti-Stalinist and an anti-Communist and when did Orwell contract rabies anyway?

“Fabian” socialism would never lead to actual Communism, the classless society that true adherents to the philosophy wished for. From this perspective, giving a couple of bucks to beggars outside of the supermarket is one of the most selfish things I can do – it assuages my conscience a little without dealing with the social structure that created beggars and college students with flat screen TVs in the first place while people are starving in Sierra Leone.

All of this is just to say that whatever “socialism” we have in the United States is merely weighted capitalism. There is little common ground between attempting to compensate for privilege in a market-based society and “common ownership.” Whether or not compensating for perceived economic, racial, or other injustices does anything to fix social problems and inequality, “small ‘c’ communism” and socialism are two different philosophies. They’re no more similar than capitalism is to authoritarianism, though radical leftists often see them as one and the same. Orwell was a stalwart socialist and a rabid anticommunist – it’s only in modern times that many of us have begun to think of them as one and the same.

Someone spent the time to put together a little video online that highlights what the objectives and views of Fabian Socialism.

Market Socialism is not incompatible with the aims of these countries.