Hey kids: Don't be a sucker for socialism

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The people doing it now.

Crony capitalists riding a revolving door?

If you want real crony capitalism see pre-regulation gilded age America.

For a master class in crony corporatism, one need only study the criminal enterprise known as the Clinton Foundation.

So it's better to do nothing? I take it you see nothing wrong with wealth accumulating at the top of the food chain until there's absolutely nothing left at the bottom.

Firms large enough to benefit from paying employees more don't even exist in classical economics. The "invisible hand" is predicated on the non-existence of monopolies or quasi-monopolies like Walmart. Prices are supposed to be determined by demand, production cost, and competition alone.

Capitalism doesn't need government to get completely out of hand. The big players only capitulated under a threat. They decided to require reasonable hours and pay living wages because they were afraid of civil unrest. The natural equilibrium balance in the gilded age was not determined by normal "market forces". Back in the day there were literally shoot-outs over labor disputes.

The Progressive Era was really an interesting time in American history.

It forced Common Sense to come to the fore. Common Sense, definitely, is not allowing Capitalism to run amok.

Yeah, that's was actually my point. Sorry, I know I've been bouncing around a bit with my points...

But here you are absolutely correct. Left unregulated for a century, America evolved into a near total plutocracy run by the Robber Barons--Rockefeller, Carnegie, Gould, Vanderbilt, etc.

The Robber Barons were the ultimate cronies, calling the shots behind the scenes and actually running the government.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time!

http://brothersjuddblog.com/archives/20 ... d_ide.html

"At the height of the Depression, several thousand American emigrants left New York on the decks of passenger liners waving goodbye to the Statue of Liberty, bound for Leningrad.

"Over 100,000 Americans had applied for jobs working in brand new factories in Soviet Russia, ironically built for Stalin by famous American industrialists such as Henry Ford.

"Those American emigrants who entered the "workers' paradise" were certain that they were leaving the misery of unemployment and poverty behind them. They considered themselves fortunate.

"Their optimism would prove to be short-lived. Most were stripped of their American passports soon after their arrival.

"Considered suspect by Stalin's paranoid totalitarian state, the foreigners were swept away in the Terror.

"The American jazz clubs, the baseball teams, and the English-language schools set up in cities across the USSR, would quickly vanish with them....

"The emigrants began their long journey either into the prison cells and the Gulag camps, or the shorter route to the execution grounds.

"In the killing fields at Butovo, a suburb 27 kilometres south-east of Moscow, several of the American baseball players were executed during the Terror, and lie buried in mass graves stretching for hundreds of metres.

"Thousands were killed in this quiet country backwater, surrounded by trees to muffle their screams.

"In its stillness lies the unimaginable horror of the Revolution that has spun out of control.

"Wearing leather aprons and protective gloves, the masked NKVD guards had set about their nightly work methodically, killing young and old alike, understanding that they too would be killed if they refused.

"But many also acted willingly, as the conscious and deliberate agents of the class struggle.

"Stalin's executioners had been convinced of the need to "kill and kill and kill" for the benefit of all mankind. And then they returned each morning to steady their nerves with their specifically-allotted quota of vodka, and to douse their clothes in eau-de-cologne to remove the stench of death, ready for the next night's work."

Socialist Venezuela continues to collapse into chaos and starvation:

http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/20/news/ec ... t-economy/

"Hungry Venezuelans cry at the sight of food, as economic crisis deepens"

"Pregnant women, children and even elderly Venezuelans crossed into Colombia on Sunday after the border was temporarily reopened, allowing them to buy basic foods and toiletries -- rare commodities in their home country.

"Tearful Venezuelans had gone weeks without basic food items like milk, flour and toilet paper. It's a sad but common part of daily life today in crisis-ridden Venezuela, a country that has the world's largest proven reserves of oil. Colombian officials estimate that about 100,000 Venezuelans crossed the border.

"Venezuela is expected to dive deeper into the abyss this year, according to new projections published Wednesday by the International Monetary Fund."

Venezuela is not real socialism... by the way, your title is incredibly patronizing... so, 'kid', why don't you instead talk of how lovely Ponzi schemes can be in capitalism?

(And what's with the focus on murder? Are you seriously implying an 'absolutely non-socialist' US has no murder?)

"Real Socialism" has never existed, but there are better examples than Venezuela.

Here's an Oxford debate on the issue from a few years ago, might be worth a look for both sides. Some interesting appearances, Theodore Dalrymple in part 3 does a good job in my opinion and Jeremy Corbyn , now leader of the opposition in Britain making his case in part 8.

You Brits better keep an eye on Daniel Hannan, because a lot of us Americans want to kidnap him and make him run for president over here.

Capitalism doesn't employ coercive force? What else is money but coercion? And arrogance, as evidenced in the title.