My pleasure. Bottom line is that we need to be ready with the answers when things totally collapse, and be able to effectively fight for them in order to avoid a tyrant or perhaps worse the tyranny of the mob.

Ben

Thanks for being angry. We need a few million people more to be as angry, and maybe we can get somewhere.

Don’t lose faith in the country. It’s foundation of individual freedom is the source of all progress. Rather, take up the fight and help to turn the tide. Ideas are powerful and in time, your voice can can make a difference. (You can tell that to me when I’m discouraged too)

Actually, free trade versus socialism is, at its root, very much about values. It is the idea of freedom, where the individual is responsible for his own actions and his own well being, versus collectivism, where the individual is subordinated to the will of the collective. They are both opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. They are not at all “systems”, in the sense that someone sets up a system to work in a certain way.

Capitalism is, at its heart, freedom. It is free trade in the most expansive sense. In capitalism, private property guarantees that any individual can accumulate wealth in any form that he or she deems best. By the same token, he or she is free to squander it in any way desired. What they aren’t free to do is take someone else’s property, either by directly stealing it or by using democratically elected officials to steal it for them.

It is never possible for socialism to exist with capitalism. To the extent that socialism is implemented, capitalism is extinguished. There are things called “mixed economies”, but rather than being a homogenous mixture, there are only certain sectors in which capitalism, the freedom to trade, is killed off. The more sectors that are killed off by socialism, the worse the country will fare.

Socialism is not a system any more than capitalism is a system. Socialism is only the use of collective force, in the form of limited or total dictatorship, to restrict the freedom of individuals to trade with whoever they want, whenever they want and under whatever terms they can mutually agree upon. At its very base, socialism is slavery and theft.

In America, there are winners and losers, just as there have been around the world, since the first humans walked the earth. As long as people are free to trade on their own terms, there can be no losers from trade. The only reason that people will freely agree to trade is if they expect to be better off after the trade. The loss that people experience is from conditions external from trade. The current meltdown has nothing to do with trade, but rather the collapse of the expansionary credit bubble created by the Federal Reserve and the fractional reserve system. The losses were not, in any way due to free trade.

There definitely are people who have been the victims of fraud. The criminals should be punished according to the crime. The criminals were not capitalists. They were criminals. Fraud is not a characteristic of capitalism any more than it is of socialism. The incentives of socialism actually encourage crime and corruption on a much greater scale, and those same incentives discourage productivity of the victims.

There is, very definitely, fair or right in individualism. Fair and right is not taking what does not belong to you, it is taking responsibility for your own actions and not making someone else pay for your mistakes.

The arguments made appeal conservatives for who this matters. Most people though just don’t care and many right now are losing faith in capitalism altogether as a system. Why?

Well, in capitalism there are winners and losers and Americans hate to lose. Most want to experience some level of success in their lives. They hate the players but they hate game even more. As a result players will want to change the rules to their favor. Kids do this all the time to get ahead. Do you think that adults are any different?

There is not such thing as fair or right in individualism there mine and right now folks are tire of losing. Don’t hate the players protect your game.