[ExI] Capitalism, anti capitalism, emotional arousal

[Stefano Vaj]

On 10 November 2011 13:03, Henry Rivera <hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu> wrote:
> On the other hand, people working within the current system will argue their accumulation of wealth is fair game; they are playing by the rules (which they helped to create I might add, which is the nature of oppression and built into the system in the US where there is little to limit financial influence of legislators by the wealthy relative to Europe for example). Zero State is taking the position that the logical solution is a new system that doesn't facilitate the rich getting richer by rewarding greed and oppression.

IMHO, there are a number of question here, which might be open even
for the most fervent Randian amongst us:

- "Perfect markets", even admitting that they can exist, are really
(or can even be made) intrinsically stable?

- If markets are means to an end, and *not* a religious taboo, they
certainly proved competitive in computational terms with attempts at
the economic planning of large entities in the period 1950-1990, but
there are no reason to believe that they cannot be in turn
outperformed, one example being exactly the internal workings of large
(capitalistic!) international groups or conglomerates rather than the
relative primitive countries still adopting a socialist economic
model.

- The *political* issues with capitalism, as opposed to *ethical*
issues ("greed and oppression", etc.), are IMHO:
i) Should really power and status in all societies be determined only
by one's money?
ii) Should one's money itself be determined on the exclusive basis of
features which often have little "natural" or social utility and
mostly perpetuate themselves through vicious circles and probably
outdated civilisational paradigms?
iii) Should self-referential interests of a globalist financial system
be allowed to expropriate popular sovereignties and induce stagnation
and loss of cultural/political pluralism and diversity à la Brave New
World?

I think those are legitimate question.

And I am not sure that any Mr. Roark would think that his place is
with the fat cats in the banks.

-- 
Stefano Vaj