Capitalism and laissez-faire

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Well, wouldn't the easy method to fix that be to get rid of public shareholder corporations. Corporations are really a government construct anyway.

That is somewhat true, I think one of the issues is that you have argued for a change in the capitalist system that would alter its fundamental logic, but I don't perceive you as providing a full justification for that. I mean, thus far you don't seem to have completely developed your views as for a new system, at least from my perspective, and this is by most logics. When I pressed you for more, you immediately jumped upon the fact that I suggested libertarian ethics as a mode for conceptualizing fairness even though I suggested egalitarian ethics for considering fairness as well.


Well, it is the promotion of self-interest. The issues we may see would be mechanism design, such as with the legal issue. The employee issue I don't see as a conflict as with such a move, we will either see employees leaving the job in greater frequency, or the move will have been efficient. Health, after all, is just something that can be traded off on the market. Finally, the issue with bribery of politicians really will depend on the losses to the people violated vs the gains to the corporations, for if the losses by the people are higher than the gains by the corporation then they have every incentive to organize to counter-act the corporate action with equal force. Really though, a number of libertarians are anti-political too if you look at their ideology, they don't want a government but just a legal force, some not even that, so if you criticize the government for being stupid for corporations they would do the same and ask that we have a less active government and more oversight.

I am not so sure, I think many functions of corporations would actually be possible with a complicated mix of contract laws. And contracts are not really seen as government constructs so much.

In a Capitalist society no politician would have power to interfere in the economic actions of its citizens lest such actions were an act to deprive the liberty of another. I.E. Murder, theft, bribery, fraud. And a company that would put shareholder profit above THAT deserves to be disbanded and sent to jail. The ability for a company to do those things is actually a result of the "mixed" elements introduced to Capitalism. (hence the term "mixed economy")

lol, that worked really well for the Soviets.

Many people in this thread seem bothered by the fact that capitalism does not create "fairness". Even using your definition of fairness, why does it even matter if an economic system is "fair". You could say it isn't fair that the poor in America today are relatively poor; however, even the poor today are better off than the Kings of old or even John D. Rockefeller in many ways. The reason they are better off is because of capitalism (why do we have such great cars, TVs, air conditioning, computers, etc today? The pursuit of profit is the reason). Under capitalism, anyone is free to rise to the top, could that be as easily done under a "fair" system (looking at the Soviets, I'd lean towards no)? Also, people in modern society have unevenly distributed advantages(some people are better looking, more intelligent, more creative, have better partners in love, taller, etc), but I don't see people complaining that is not fair and we should try and correct it. Aside from that, I'd like to ask again, Why does fairness even matter?

Fairness is relative, true, but I believe that it should matter. A fair and free society, in which people at least have a chance, and a good standard of living, and no slave wages, is greatly preferable to a dog eat dog system in which if you don't have money and connections, you're screwed. Fairness matters a hell of a lot. I'm not saying that a hierachical structure, in which some people are more important than others, is wrong. Because some people are more capable than others, in various ways. What I'm saying is that no-one should be economically and socially downtrodden in this day and age, especially in developed nations.