Africa capitalist? check out http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2000 Here's the thing with poverty. Widespread poverty only exists when governments tax so much that there becomes no point to trying to advance. What's even worse, that wealth is then giving to the so-called less fortunate so they can reap the benefits of other's hard work, giving them no incentive to also improve their situation. Poverty is something that will always exist in any society, even in a completely free market capitalist system. poverty will always exist because there will always be people too stupid or too lazy to make a good living. Don't get me wrong though, you don't need to be intelligent to live well in a capitalist system. The common man in a capitalist system lives much better off than the average person in say, Africa or south America. Most countries have a limited amount of economic freedom, the moment you become well off the government starts extorting wealth from you.

Hm, all of Africa, South America, most of Asia, most of Europe and Australia. BTW if you don't mind, is there somewhere else we can chat? I don't want to annoy the rest of Slashdot with my comments and it would be a little easier.

No, but most of the world isn't capitalist either.

Hey all, I propose a new antitrust case. Let's sue Microsoft for distributing it's version of Stdlib.h with Visual Studios 2008. You see, Microsoft is hurting developer choice and stifling innovation by pushing Borland's version and Glibc's from the market.

Okay, this is a common marxsist myth about capitalism that it distributes wealth unfairly. Wealth is not distributed unfairly, it is distributed by those who earned it in proportion to how much the general population values that person's goods and services. keep in mind that business men have to cater to the common man if they want to keep their profits. The moment a business stops doing that, or engages in nonproductive practices, it creates a void that someone else will eventually rise to fill.

When the government breaks up a monopoly, it is considering that monopoly as state property, something that can be seized upon and controlled however the government sees fit. When the government regulates, it is trying to impose an economic plan. The government believes it has a better planned economy than the one the free market set up. Socialism is foremost about distribution of wealth and to create a society where everyone has equal opportunity in life, regardless of where they were born or who their parents were. Distrobution of wealth == ripping the asses of the successful to give to the less able helping them to continue making bad choices (Robbin Hood Syndrome.)

Okay, socialism is state ownership of capital or heavy regulation of it.

Okay, let me try again. I was ranting earlier. The theory of the antitrust case is that there is an applications barrier to competition. The belief is that by bundling IE with the operating system, consumers will not want to go out and purchase an alternative browser thus, eliminating any prospect of innovation and crushing competition with anticompetitive behavior. This theory is so wrong I have no idea where to begin, but I'll take a shot at it. First, every business should be anticompetitive and they are. Bill gates started this business and he's paying for it. He has a right to protect it short of using physical force to achieve his dominance. When a business lowers prices, becomes more agressive with ads or restructures in any way shape or form, they are demonstrating anticompetitive behavior. The EU has this warped idea of competition in which no one actually wins, like little kids playing a game of Monopoly. That's not competition, that's socialism. Note that this isn't just in the EU, it's in the united states too. Second, any type of free market barrier to competition is impossible. The only barriers to competition that exist are government created barriers. Other corporations are whining because Microsoft has lifted the standard of quality that needs to be overcome before their product will gain widespread acceptance. Finally, most consumers do not need to use another browser because IE works and it works well. Before you can convince people to change over to something else, you need to show them that they can do everything with the alternate product that they could do with the original one, but even better in every way. Firefox is proof there is no barrier to competition. Firefox's market share is only slightly above IE's. That should be proof that dynamic market forces do work. By the way, I'm posting this with Firefox 3.0 on a Windows system. The fact Microsoft bundled IE with their OS does not restrict my consumer choice to use Firefox.

Yes, the Microsoft antitrust case is fucking retarded. The EU is simply socialist. Now I want to ask a serious question. Why is it that people hate success? Hatred of the rich is what this ultimately boils down to.