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Matt Cook's avatar

I disagree. Capitalism is what you call it, but you are not using the term correctly. This is corporate fascism. The State works in partnership with private actors. It's what makes Nazi Germany. And what makes the modern French state, and to a lesser degree the US state. If it was capitalism you would have free markets and free trade. But you have nothing like that. The opposite of that. It is run on behalf of the elites who own shares in large corporations, or who are benefiting by being vastly overpaid by the State. Capitalism isn't anything like this.

If you are in the US, compare the somewhat capitalist veterinarian. You bring your cat to the vet and the vet tells you the cat is sick. "How much" you ask, and you make a financial agreement. That is capitalism.

Instead, if you are a person and you go to the doctor, vast organizations are involved. They pay the doctor who is working for a large medical corporation. You never know what it costs, and neither does the doctor. You have choices only to the degree the insurance companies and government allows. Payment is according to government order.

If the vet or the doctor were diagnosing and treating the same thing, say a broken leg, the vet would cost $1000 and the doctor would cost $10,000 but you wouldn't know it's $10,000.

Corporate fascism is the scourge. Don't say this is capitalism. Capitalism is the only thing that due to its extraordinary productivity is responsible for our rising above the animals and the primitive peoples and having amazing wealth and material success. Capitalism enriches everyone.

Corporate fascism makes us poorer and poorer because it is nothing but parasites leaching off of us and there are fewer and fewer productive people and more and more leaches. They pay people to become leaches in return for their political support. One reason Singapore has a much better economy and system than the USA.

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Toby Rogers's avatar

Whoa. This is genius. And it gives me hope (that someone could see it and name it so clearly).

Isn't our response then to re-encode values in every way possible -- through critical thinking, in the family, in the church, in the community. Local, local, local, eschew brands, turn off the TV, meet in person, fight to defend non-corporate values wherever they flourish?

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