Is this what it has come down to?

Everything coming out of the White House these days seems to be attacking Capitalism as represented by Mitt Romney. After the "War on Women" didn't gain much traction with the critical 'undecided' 10%, it looks like the President will be running against Capitalism... at least bogeyman Capitalism, whatever that means.

In fact, it really doesn't need to mean anything does it, as long as it pulls in votes?

Look at Obama's latest screed against Romney and his Bain Capital days where he bemoans the fact that Romney's investment company shut down a steel mill in Middle America, firing hundreds of workers while "saving" the parent company. There was no mention of how many automobile dealerships with thousands of employees were shut down during Obama's "saving" of the auto industry. Yeah, that's different.

It seems that any other -ism is better than Capitalism in his and his supporter's eyes. After all, fairness is the goal here, right? Shouldn't everyone in America be able to move from point A to point B on a private jet? Ooops, wrong metaphor... sorry.

Are these people nuts? Instead of looking at all of human history, why don't we just focus on the past 250 years or so. Let's start with the French Revolution and move forward to today.

This blog post will be a short one, so I will not chronicle them all, but every experiment from Russia to France to North Korea to post-WWI Europe that attempted to replace the existing government with a radically different one promising "people power and egalitarianism" has failed miserably.

Some will say "Yeah, but every attempt at perfecting mankind was met with resistance from the bourgeoisie and countries with power and vested interests." Well, duh... Do you think that people might put up a fight if someone tried to take everything away from them and then kill them? But even that argument is false, since the Soviet Union, China and North Korea did about as good of a job as possible in exterminating all opposition and closing their society to ANY externalities in order for their solution to flourish.

So, how did that all work out?

But, HOPE springs eternal (see 2008), so it appears we are just one competent, benevolent dictator away from the perfect state where all needs of the proletariat are met, human nature is negated, fairness rules and milk and honey flows from every orifice.

Hey, sounds good. Sign me up.

(Do you think they will let me attend their $15,000 per plate Hollywood fundraiser? But, hey, I am a little short on cash, though. Let me just put my donation on my American Express card. I can pay for it after November, plus I could use the miles.)

Comments

Craig Hollins said…
If you want examples of governments that changed radically and it worked out? It's happened in Egypt (not the recent one but in the 60s), Spain, several African and Asian countries. There are many countries that have radically changed their government, not always violently I might add, and have prospered as a result. I suppose the best example is Australia in 1901.
Did they prosper as much as the US? Obviously not but the Americans had two advantages which gave them a head start. The first was slavery which enabled the agricultural sector to get off the ground. Today the US agricultural sector only survives by massive subsidies which kind of proves the point.
The second, and most critical, was the discovery of ample oil supplies precisely at a time when energy was a major economic input. This enabled the industrial sector to expand very cheaply. Today, again, it relies on subsidies for its survival.
To claim it was due solely to capitalism is plain wrong. Sure, capitalism helped but it wasn't the only factor.
Extremism in any form, towards either edge, is never good. Communism failed in the 80s and capitalism about 30 years later. Maybe it's time to look for a balance that allows reasonable growth of entrepreneurs whilst maintaining good support for the masses?
After all, Apple's main success has happened almost entirely under the Obama administration. It is possible.

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