capitalism
Out of context: Reply #34
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- ukit0
The "deregulate everything"/ pure capitalism philosophy is simplistic and would lead to a society that would be great for about 1% of the people and really shitty for the remaining 99%.
Think about the fact that deregulation in the 90s in the United States under Clinton and the Republican Congress allowed banks, insurers and securities firms to merge, repealing the safeguards that were put in place during the 30s after the Great Depression. Then during Bush's term, rewriting the laws so that the amount of leverage allowed to be made on loans (ie, loans based on other loans) was many times greater than before, which led to worldwide investment in risky securities greater than the entire world's GDP.
All of these things helped create the current crisis but the "free market" couldn't solve them because the risks weren't immediately apparent. In fact, the opposite was true - banking firms were able to make huge profits by bilking the system over the short term and once it became apparent that the system was flawed, everyone was fucked.
So it's unclear to me how a purist free market system prevents a crisis like that. A similar argument could be made in terms of the environment - it's in nobody's short term interest to reduce pollution because it costs money to do so, but over the long term, everyone suffers if companies are allowed to pollute as much as they want.
- 1%–99% really? Those were 'oppressed' American workers that were the first in the world to afford to own cars.raf
- That's because we have a hybrid economy. Where do you think the minimum wage and 40 hr week came from?ukit
- Before those laws were put into place with the help of progressive politicians and unions, working life in America was significantly shittierukit
- was significantly worse. And that doesn't even get into child labor.ukit
- Ford Model T was launched in 1908raf