Dow falls over 500 points

[Pentegarn]

The problem with blaming capitalism is you are blaming something disguised as capitalism for everything when the actual case is that all those things, (speculation, futures, market shares, et al) are not the true meaning of capitalism as it was meant to be.

Capitalism should be trading value for value. Things like speculation, futures, stocks, and the like are not true capitalism, where person A has a tangible thing person B needs and person A makes the best quality of that thing available. That was how it was once long long ago and when it was that way, America did nothing but grow, it wasn't until the stock market was introduced that these intangible financial crises began to appear. Before that, it was all about real events effecting the market (like Blasted mentioned, shortages, war, etc).

Real capitalism does not exist any more so the argument that capitalism is a failed system can't be truly proven by any event in the last century

[Zhukov]

Originally Posted by Pentegarn

Real capitalism does not exist any more so the argument that capitalism is a failed system can't be truly proven by any event in the last century

It might sound like I am a huge hypocrite here, but the difference (or at least, what I see the as difference) between saying:

"That wasn't true communism" (which, I probably said a lot in my more-youthier times)

and

"It's not true capitalism"

Is 1) the simple answer is that communism is a stateless society, and the 'Communist' parties of the 20th century merely called themselves Communist because that's what they purported to be aiming for, not what they actually had achieved, which I can delve into further if you REALLY want to

2) The 'speculation, futures, stocks' etc are all 'symptoms' (yes, you beat me to it) of what you can call the healthy capitalist time period. Communism has had no such period. All the foundations for what you see as just not true capitalism were lain there, and it hasn't taken any serious revolutions to get to where it is now. It has evolved into what it is now, at no ones surprise, from 'true capitalism', with no other avenue available to it. Is it still wrong to criticise capitalism if baseless trading was always the inevitable conclusion?

You could argue that Stalin did this, evolved it, but he couldn't do it without killing opponents, changing laws and principles and contradicting himself, other communists and also the ideals of the whole thing. So much so that the question has to be asked "what is left?" the answer being "very little".

You can say it's not true capitalism, but the world is still run by the capitalists who have legally evolved it without contradicting what has always been the number one ideal; capital making money. Capitalism isn't about trading tangible item A with tangible item B; they had that in ancient Greece too. Any laws you are talking about are to do with a country, not an economic system, because the economic system just says "make capital". That used to mean through owning a factory and making shoes, now it means through buying and selling as well as owning the factory.

If we are going to leave it as it's "symptomatic of capitalism" that's fine by me though.