Yeah, I'm definitely coupling capitalism and free-markets, thanks for the clarification :)

Spoken like a true BELIEVER, ;)

Mark me as a foe then. You are an angry person who likes to demonize and belittle people with opposing view points. I have had loads of experience with the likes of you.

I AM a believer in principles that I hold, until I'm shown good reason to change them. I was a strong believer in socialist ideas for many years until I heard some very profound arguments on Austrian economics and true free market ideals. At that point I decided I could no longer justify my previous leanings. I have no problem changing my viewpoints when confronted with compelling arguments. I have heard no such arguments today.

One thing I will give you is that my statement on the wealth gap did trivialize the practice of slavery and the general oppression of minorities in this country, even to the present day (see the continued drug war in America). I view this ongoing human tragedy as a social issue, not as an intrinsic property of the free market. We can argue about slavery and mistreatment of groups of people with ANY form of government. I did read the brief introduction and book excerpt from your link, "A People's History of Poverty in America," Stephan Pimpare. He makes a valid point in one paragraph about the distortion of basically free workers in the overall assessment of the system; This is an interesting point that I will be looking more closely at in the near future. However, my point was more towards the current 1% vs 99%, as opposed to poverty conditions of oppressed minorities; distort my argument if you want to, but as I have already admitted, my intention was not to minimize the suffering of so many people.

Its too bad you are closing off discussion; I find that argument and rational discussion with those who disagree with me are sometimes the most worthwhile conversations to have. They force you to defend your stances rationally and truly look at why you have them. A true believer connects emotionally with their argument, not rationally, and therefore finds it nearly impossible to change their ideas. That is not me, regardless of what you imply.

I've already written a good deal on this thread, but I appreciate your post and wanted to briefly comment...

(1) This is an excellent, excellent point. I can only say that America had a pretty close to ideal capitalist, free-market society, codified in the Constitution. Now, I would say that the departure from this ideal capitalism comes from heavy government regulation and failure to enforce violations of companies in the market on the property and contractual rights of the individual. This brings us to your example of Russia, yeah I can say now that we aren't really a capitalist society, but is this the inevitable result of implementing one, that you eventually get to the point where it no longer resembles one? I can't really counter this point, because its a valid one.

That comment actually pretty much includes your (1) and (2) points, so I'll leave it at that. Good discussion points, and I hope somebody picks them up and continues; however, that someone will not be me, I'm exhausted from all the posting :)

Your last reply was much more conducive to a rational discussion, thank you. I'll keep this reply short, as its the last one I'll make on this thread.

Saying that 12 people owned the economy 100 years ago is just silly. The market is a wildly complex and dynamic creature made up of the interactions of all who particpate, basically the entire citizenry. I will agree that there was power concentration, but this will happen in any situation. Take communism in Russia for example, where essentially power accumulated into a very small political ruling class (sound familiar?). The difference with pure capitalism is that there is actually a means for the power concentration to change. If any of those 12 people you mention had made a continual effort to crowd out all competition it would eventually depleat their resources to the point where effective competition would be possible, or it would bankrupt them; note, I am not disagreeing with temporary (even if years long) concentrations of power, just saying pure capitalism offers the means for change through the dynamics of the market.

The intracicies of what I previously mentioned with barriers of entry etc.. are the most important part of the discussion, they illustrate the complexities of the market and the fact that no one power concentration could hope to be maintained indefinitely without government assistance, of which I gave several pretty damn good examples.

I don't suggest there is an invisible hand making intelligent decisions through the citizenry. I am merely saying that a pure free market prevents any one power base from exercising total control indefinitely, like you see by countless examples throughout history. This is not make believe, this happens then this happens, its demonstrable. A purely simple and humurous analogy (not necessarily completely accurate): A lion pride may have effective domination of a certain market, but you get enough buffalos together and they can drive them out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ1Z3QGAmx4&feature=fvsr

In closing, the capitalist and free market American government gave the world the largest middle class ever seen in history. The wealth gap was pretty stable for like 200 years up until the beginning of the 20th century or so; so while I'm not expert enough to comment on 12 people owning the economy, I am suspect of the statement. We have seen the wealth gap increase dramatically since the early 1970s, as it really did since the beginning of the 20th century, but much more so now, and this is a direct result of the poor non-capitlistic, non-free market principles America has been following for the last century.

Well, I'll try to keep my end of the conversation a little bit more civil that yours.. 1.) You say that my statement, "we haven't been capitalist for the better part of the last century," is, as you so eloquently put it, "shit." You then offer the fact that 10-12 people essentially owned the economy of US as proof that we have been capitalist. This is in fact proof to the contrary, here's why: The only monopolies that can exist in a purely capitalistic free market economy are ones in which the competitor has been able to produce goods and availability to the consumer better than all others. This earned monopoly exists only so long as the supplier is capable of maintaining this level of quality. New competitors will be able to enter the marketplace so long as their is no barrier to entry. There are often legitimate barriers to entry such as prohibitive start up costs and existing market penetration by competitors; however, these will typically not exclude all competitors desiring to enter the market when an undeserved monopoly exists (as previously stated, earned means they are still delivering the goods better than anyone else could). Now, illegitimate barriers to entry happens several different ways. First, when there is a collusion between government and corporation to essentially elevate them above the non-competitive barriers of the free market: subsidies, tax breaks, etc.. I'll give you an example, corn production is essential an artificial, government sponsored monopoly in the US. The US government subsidizes corn growth to encourage supply to outpace demand. As a result, like 90% of the items around you some kind of corn product in them (a bit of hyperbole, but whatever), Now, because of this artificially lowered price on the market, sugar is expensive by comparison (not to mention that foreign sources of sugar are overly tariffed because of lobbying by the sugar industry, another artificial barrier of entry for goods that are produced at a lower cost in the market, etc..) Now, the effects of this simple manipulation by the ULTIMATE source of monopoly, the government, the effects spiral out of control. What I mean by this is you see a pervasive entry of corn products into the market such as high fructose corn syrup replacing sugar in everything. Hell, because of NAFTA american suppliers sell the corn to mexico. Mexican farmers can't compete with the artificially low american prices because their government doesn't subsidize their corn product, so a million Mexican farmers are out of business, with a significant portion now wanting to cross into america illegally to try and make a living off of markets hiring them to try and evade minimum wage and other government imposed regulations on the free market. Seriously, government intervention, while I can understand peoples' desire to have it, represent the little dutch boy with his finger in the dam, you try to plug a hole and then 15 unintended consequences start spilling out everywhere. 2. You then go on to make the comment, "excuse me buddy, but take your 'real capitalism', and shove it up your ass. at least, now entire country is owned through proxy corporations, shareholderships in big funds, therefore giving the ILLUSION of being a participatory, pluralist economy. back 100 years ago, the 12 owners were directly owning and running everything. really. shove it up in your ass." Actually, 100 years ago we were still pretty much capitalist and free market.. about 1913-1914 is when the federal reserve got introduced and we started to practice the printing of money and fractional reserve banking - quite antithetical to the ideals of the free market and economic value (see Keynesian economics, I'm sure you are a big supporter). The 12 people you are referring to emerged sometime in this time period, along with Roosevelt and the new deal, heavy heavy industry regulation... Now I'm not going to argue against what Roosevelt did, he had an incredibly difficult situation to deal with, and trying to put forth a solid argument on how the free market would handle it is a little time consuming, especially when the response will be something like, 'Your an asshole shove Rockefeller up your ass, etc.. etc..." And, I'm confused, are you arguing that the ILLUSION of participatory government is somehow better than actually KNOWING you don't have control?? And you criticize me for fiat statements that the current system is bad, and then go on to talk about how bad the current system is, are you disagreeing/agreeing? I'm pretty certain you are just arguing from knee-jerk emotion at this point, why don't you calm down and put down a coherent argument that we can discuss point by point like rational adults. So, excuse me, "buddy," but you still have the misconceptions going on..

Blaming capitalism is a common misconception. The US has arguable NOT been capitalist for the better part of the last century. We have changed to a corporation run government. In a free market capitalist society, corporations would have no power over government policy. The government sets up and maintains courts of law to enforce any disputes, or broken laws, etc.. between the people and the free market (Desirable quality, just go watch Milton Friedman for a bit).. We live in a society where corporate lobbying essentially sets up regulation and law and leverages the government to do its bidding (need examples, how about DMCA, SOPA, the leaked threats to trade blacklist Spain if they don't adopt a SOPA esque law policy, just to name a few recent ones, but if I took the time to dig deeper I could certainly increase the size of this post by orders of magnitude). Anyway, I don't want to go on and on about the true workings of a capitalist/free market society, I just wanted to point out a few HUGE misconceptions about blaming capitalism and free markets when in fact we are not really running our system that way.