Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Finance, the economy & Economics The Debate: Is America’s future capitalist or socialist?

I did not know that the owners of the Berkeley Pit had abandoned it. Nor do I know why they did. It might have been due to the costs of cleaning up the pollution and the resultant medical bills that made the company to go bankrupt and not pay be able to pay for the damages it caused. If that is the situation it is most likely because the owners of companies have limited liabilities when things like this happen. It is unfortunate if that is what happened. However, without that limited liability no one would invest in any company. They wouldn't because no one wants their personal wealth taken for terrible events like these. Would you invest in GM if you were to be held personally responsible every time a GM made vehicle was in a car crash?

Yes, Classical Liberal free market capitalism is a train wreck.

That "train wreck" has improved the world's standard of living. Look at what the world was like before 1776, when Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, to what is like now. Would anyone want to go back to living as people did then? No, the real "train wreck" is socialism. In socialist countries people lined up to buy bread. In capitalist countries there lines of bread to choose from.

Well, I don’t happen to think that you actually know the difference, just like most people. The words simply have some vague meaning that weaponizes them. That’s why discussion is impossible.

Yes, a discussion with a closed mind, like yours logtroll, is impossible.

Let’s try a different subset of issues where I admit to not having a clear picture of the philosophy of Classical Liberalism - if I remember right you did say you are a Classical Liberal, right?

This thing of tariffs - are they an acceptable tool for governments to use to protect free markets?

I thought you said there never has been a true free-market Capitalism, yet you enthusiastically credit a non-existent thing with fantastic success using vague and extremely generalized examples. Can you explain, please?

Yes, I did say that true free market capitalism has never existed. The fact that it hasn't does not mean that capitalism has not improved the world's standard of living. What you did is read something into my comment that isn't there. I did not say capitalism's success was due to the existence of true free market capitalism. I just said that capitalism, despite the necessary restrictions on it, has improved the living conditions of the world. To understand my comments about capitalism it would help if you could look at capitalism without your bias against it.

Tariffs have been used for two purposes. 1) To protect emerging businesses, as was done in the early days of our country to help them grow and be able to compete. 2) As a source of revenue for our government. Prior to the income tax tariffs were the primary source of income for our government. Are tariffs acceptable? Yes and no. It depends on whether they are being used for, protection or for revenue. Most of the time they are unacceptable because they are a restriction on trade.

And in this sea of hopeless disagreement and semantic posturing we see a small patch of common ground.