5-7-2010 (Friday)

I thought we had a good conversation yesterday and at the end of the day my friend CT (who writes a far better blog then mine called Word Around The Net) joined in with what I felt was a very good statement and I felt like he put into words what I have long felt about business in America and really the world today. I have long felt that the "Free Market" has not been free due to the meddling that goes on when people conspire to make rules that allow things to go easier for them. As usual I feel that my ability to explain what I mean in this case is escaping me so I am going to put CT's statement below.

CT commented

"...One of the problems we face in modern culture is that people think the big business cronyism and inside playing with government is somehow capitalism when its nothing of the sort. If you have senators and presidents doctoring the system to benefit your company because its so big and powerful ... and so big they cannot be allowed to fail when they do stupid things or face a bad business cycle, that's not capitalism. There's no competition there, no true free market, so the system is choking out capitalism.

In essence, you have a reverse socialism, where the economy is controlled by the government, but only for the benefit of a favored, powerful few, a sort of Socialistic Oligarchy.

When Goldman-Sachs and Citibank are allowed to effectively write the legislation which affects them and stock the executive department (regardless of which president or party) with their guys, that's not capitalism."

I think Christopher hit the nail on the head. A free market is just that. It is free it is not being manipulated by outside sources to control who gets ahead. The only issue at hand is who have the better product and what consumers choose to purchase.

My friend S also commented with this little gem

"...liability requirements for damage to public assets don't even begin to cover the cost of potential losses as they do with private assets.

Surgichrome (along with countless others, I don't mean to single them out) couldn't afford to fix the problems they caused, we paid the bill to fix the problem, and they continued operating and offending. Does anyone doubt we'll see that scenario repeated with BP?

That's public subsidization of private profit, and that's my beef."

So much good stuff yesterday and I feel intellectually unable to keep up with it. We also had some discussion about business responsibility and personal responsibility. It was I felt a really good discussion overall and I want to encourage you readers to go back and look at it again and comment. Bring it up here or back there or link other people to it. I think so good points were made and some good questions brought up. I would love for this conversation to continue.