Is Capitalism - and the culture it produces - evil?

Never mind - just realised I was in T.A.W.

TheLostCoin said:

Consumerism, escapist outlets, and the promotion of hedonism by Capitalism have led to a complete collapse of religiosity and even basic social structures that we consider "human." We live in a society that increasingly supports an idea of individualism that is beyond just ideas such as the "pursuit of happiness."

"Just do whatever makes you happy. Even if it's harmful to you and hurts others, as long as you aren't directly infringing on another person's right to 'be happy', you are okay." A standard of morality that is horrifying and inhibits the potential for people to be the best person they can be.

Capitalism has also promoted a culture of dominance, supremacy, and competition so fierce that even to just be above average and secure a future for his or her kids, a person often has to foresake his or her entire family, life, and happiness dedicated to a job to ascend a hierarchy from the position they find themselves at. Such hard work also corresponds with physical, mental, and spiritual deterioration; depression; and suicide.

And increasingly, capitalism continuously increases the gap between the rich and the poor, day by day making it more difficult to ascend the hierarchy. Not only does it do it naturally by a larger supply of the population thereby increasing competition, but it does so by even the way it influences society. And the ways it does this is disgusting; it gate-keeps accessibility into the market except for those who are the top 1% in natural talent or are rich enough; one just has to look at extravagant college costs; introduces hedonism in relationships between men and women which leads to dysfunctional families for the uneducated and more easily impressionable, made the impoverished people reliant on food that makes them fat and lazy, and encourages a lifestyle for people to spend extravagant amounts to either show-off or "escape" the world, among other things.

Let's not forget the fact that capitalism is fundamentally destroying the planet.

I can't help but feel that all of this is a result of capitalism alone, and day by day it becomes worse and worse.

How is it defensible at all for many of you Republicans / right-wingers?

Considering that all of this is a product of the system alone, is our consumerist, capitalist culture at all defensible?

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The problem is the lack of any credible alternative. A free market system is about the best thing that has happened to humankind in terms of government, but 'the best thing' means not good but as good as it gets, or has got anyway. The Scandinavian and Northern European countries, and NZ I would say, are the best examples of how a relatively fair and just society can be built on free market principles, but nowhere and no system is anything like perfect. The defence is, what else is there? What other system has been shown to work any better?

All discussions are a waste of time unless one defines terms. Without that, everyone is loading their own baggage into the words, just like for some, "sin" means "a violation of an arbitrary God-given rule" and others, that it is "a broken relationship with God and behavior that results from that".

All definitions are opinion. Dictionaries are sometimes of little help, and generally represent the biases of those that compile them. But some definitions can be shown to be better thought-out and based than others, and we should desire to get to those definitions.

I find that Hilaire Belloc, although Catholic, had a wonderful propensity for definition, clarity of thinking about what things are. It's like reading Mr. Spock, but the logic is crushing, and forces one to dig deep into one's own assumptions to hope to even try to disagree.

An ideal society in which the means of production
should be in the hands of the political officers of the
community we call Collectivist, or more generally
Socialist.*

A society in which private property in land and
capital, that is, the ownership and therefore the con-
trol of the means of production, is confined to some
number of free citizens not large enough to determine
the social mass of the State, while the rest have not
such property and are therefore proletarian, we call
Capitalist ; and the method by which wealth is pro-
duced in such a society can only be the application
of labour, the determining mass of which must neces-
sarily be proletarian, to land and capital, in such
fashion that, of the total wealth produced, the Prole-
tariat which labours shall only receive a portion.

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General error arises in which any definition mistakes hard work and enjoying the fruits of one's labors, rather than the accumulation of capital as such, for "capitalism". It's a common mistake. Also, Belloc showed me that "proletarian" is a real concept, and not merely Marxist propaganda. I had no idea before reading Belloc. Now I can see that most people are in fact objectively proletarian, and not capitalists at all, even if they call themselves such.

Full text of "The servile state"

no, capitalism is not evil. evil men can take advantage of the system (just like they can do with monarchy, communal living, etc), but that doesn't mean the system itself is evil.

ArmyMatt said:

no, capitalism is not evil. evil men can take advantage of the system (just like they can do with monarchy, communal living, etc), but that doesn't mean the system itself is evil.

Click to expand...

It all begins from thinking about definitions, what things are...

rusmeister said:

It all begins from thinking about definitions, what things are...

Click to expand...

indeed. that's why I said communal living and not communism.

that's not exactly an objective definition of capitalism, despite all of its ills.

TheLostCoin said:

Let's define it:

Capitalism - an economic system based around private trade, resulting from the restructuring of merchants into business organizations and publicly traded companies, from the Industrial Revolution onward; allowing business organizations and pubicly traded companies to become astronomically rich and have complete power and influence over society through that wealth; with our social system typically instilled with a spirit of "free market economics" and "free trade" as a good in of itself, and hostility towards government regulation.

The question is this:

1. Is our consumerist, corporate culture, with an increasing wealth gap that prohibits individuals from ascending the hierarchy, a result of capitalism by itself or something else? And if it's something else, what is it and how can we fix it?
2. Going off of Fr. Matthew's argument, if it's just "evil people" taking advantage of the system, does capitalism allow itself, by its very nature, to be taken advantage of by evil people more than other systems?

Click to expand...

I could like this, but I feel like it takes what I've already offered- Belloc's excellently -reasoned definition, and just... ignores it. I don't think any of us here are on Belloc's level. It's like undergrad physics students imagining themselves the equals of Einstein...

While what you say has merit, ultimately the problem is democracy and multiculturalism.

Everyone comes here for the greed of making money that's true. But they would not be here if it was not marketed as a multicultural free for all. Because of this everyone votes for what's in their personal best interests. The politicians need niche groups to be voted in so they divide to create a constituency for themselves and that's where lobbyists and unions come in.

I have to say that due to our fallen nature we as humans are going to turn every system ever conceived evil, or potentially will. The system itself is not evil, but how we use, and act with it potentially is evil. This sounds a lot like trying to find a "thing" to place blame on rather than dealing with the problem. Which is sinful human beings.

Phronema said:

I have to say that due to our fallen nature we as humans are going to turn every system ever conceived evil, or potentially will. The system itself is not evil, but how we use, and act with it potentially is evil. This sounds a lot like trying to find a "thing" to place blame on rather than dealing with the problem. Which is sinful human beings.

Click to expand...

This seems to imply that any system could do equally well if we applied it with good intention and effort. I don't think that’s true.
If I tried to put it in the simplest terms, going from the understandings Belloc lays out so clearly in “the Servile State”, capitalism sees the individual as the basis of society and its endgame is that of Monopoly, or Highlander (“There can be only one”), with the few ultimate business owners - or single ultimate owner - controlling the state and everything else. Socialism sees the whole society as... the basis of society and its endgame is totalitarianism with the state controlling the businesses, and everything else.
Distributism sees the family as the basis of society, and its endgame will have everything that goes wrong do so on a small enough scale as to not take down the whole.

rusmeister said:

This seems to imply that any system could do equally well if we applied it with good intention and effort. I don't think that’s true.
If I tried to put it in the simplest terms, going from the understandings Belloc lays out so clearly in “the Servile State”, capitalism sees the individual as the basis of society and its endgame is that of Monopoly, or Highlander (“There can be only one”), with the few ultimate business owners - or single ultimate owner - controlling the state and everything else. Socialism sees the whole society as... the basis of society and its endgame is totalitarianism with the state controlling the businesses, and everything else.
Distributism sees the family as the basis of society, and its endgame will have everything that goes wrong do so on a small enough scale as to not take down the whole.

Click to expand...

I didn't imply any such thing, or didn't intend to. I have to disagree with you here, Rus. Which is I believe a first.

So in the case of Mr. Belloc there I have to disagree with him as well. While I won't pretend to be more knowledgeable on the subject than he is I fail to see how his perfect iteration of capitalism fits America today. There are anti-trust laws in place to prevent the very paradigm, and specifically the creation of monopolies you site here. It's no different than Marx, and Engels utopian communist paradigm. It never came to exist regardless of the minute details in which it was described because human beings are flawed.

My point is that nothing is inherently evil until humans interact with it aside from Satan, and his demons. For us to run around painting such broad pictures of what capitalism is is wholly false. Take for instance the Orthodox monks, and nuns who exist in our American capitalism. They interact with it, and aren't evil, and don't partake of the evil hedonism that exists within it. What of the innovation that comes from the competition that capitalism so often brings that ends up positively affecting the whole of a society? Is that evil too? The "hedonism" the OP refers to exists because fallen human beings allow it to do so. The system didn't bring it about, the people who exist within that system did.

I'm sorry I just fail to see how an entire concept can be evil without any interaction from the very people who exist in it to either be given a chance to bring about that evil, or alternatively some goodness.

So, if it's inherently evil, or people have such a huge issue with wealth distribution I'd be open to hear recommendations on a new one that was less evil, but still has all the benefits of capitalism though I think we'd be hard pressed to find one.

I guess I just tend to see this in the context of the fall of mankind, and that we tend to ruin everything we come in contact with whether it be the Earth, or governments, and it's all due to our fallen nature along with the passions. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how I view it.

TheLostCoin said:

Considering that all of this is a product of the system alone, is our consumerist, capitalist culture at all defensible?

Click to expand...

Never mind - just realized I was in T.A.W.

I'm not sure whether this is a devil's advocate post or a preachy one?

I'm a Republican....the Party of Lincoln. My observation about capitalism is simple. Of all the systems in the world, the United States is the only nation that has declared our liberty is GOD-GIVEN. Our rights come from God in their most natural form from the foundation of the Earth, and God, through His providence, has provided liberty throughout time immemorial. But each time such liberty was offered, it was usurped through the powers of evil and greedy men. So, the concept of the Framers is that our rights are issued from the Almighty, not from men. That is already a solid foundation upon which to build a country. Now, I understand the Founders were largely Protestants or Deists, but the concept is still a sounds one.

Capitalism in itself is not an evil one at all. The quoted idea of the pursuit of happiness you have in this post is not necessarily accurate in my humble opinion. Yes, individualism is there, which I find important, but so is FREE WILL. Orthodoxy and the Creation itself was built on free will. We must have the liberty of soul to choose good or evil, hatred or love. Capitalism, in its respect for individualism, allows us just that. I can choose to do good things with my money like helping others, supporting my church, giving to local shelters, helping out a friend in need, or saving my money for worthwhile reasons, or I can be a greedy weasel who can never get enough. St. John Chrysostom talks about the importance of free will and a free market place where the middle class to wealthier classes have room to donate money and offer their treasure to the less fortunate so that, not only the poor man gets blessings, but also the giver/wealthier man.

The Founding Fathers never spoke of the pursuit of happiness in terms of greed and wantonness, licentiousness or evil. Perhaps the OP is creating an anachronistic view of "happiness" based on 2020 standards. Perhaps it is the evil nature of modern people that is the problem, not the system? And perhaps a misuse of liberty and capitalism is far more to blame? I submit also that the infiltration of socialism into capitalism has also created disaster. Let me provide an example......

College loans. Set the rewind button back to 1955. You want to go to college. You don't have much money. You would borrow money from your local bank like a Wells Fargo, etc. to get a student loan. Loans were based market-wise on the debt of the time, what was doable for college. It was all a private sector economy where school was concerned. Colleges were $500-$800 per year. However, fast forward to the modern era of Uncle Sam/U.S. Government assuming the role in a socialist manner of handling college loans! Now that the U.S. Government has guaranteed the loans, colleges know the sky is the limit! Whereas in 1955, the universities knew they could only get what the banks would give, now universities knew that they could push for more. AND THEY DID! And they did some more...and some more....and more. Pretty soon outlandish sabbaticals kicked in, paying celebrities exorbitant fees to speak at the school, raising fees here and there, over and over.....

In 1997 I was at California State University Fresno. I paid $986 for one semester. With books and other materials, it came out realistically to around $2,000 per trimester. Now it is around $3,000 for tuition and $10,000 with books and fees!!! Wow! Fresno State, like any other higher education system, has milked the U.S. government until the udders are raw.

So here is the socialist in modern America, mostly young folks----"My life is so unfair! My parents and grandparents were out on their own kicking butt at age 21! They had hardly any debt and a job! I'm 25 and still living with my parents, saddled with debt, can't find a job! This is Trump's fault! This is capitalism's fault! This is a free market's fault! That Karl Marx fella is starting to sound pretty reasonable!"

Problem? It wasn't capitalism's fault that the kid got saddled with debt! It's the government's fault for creating a market for college wherein they are the ONLY means of debt. They eliminated all competition and created a system of endless owing and borrowing because colleges know they can and WILL get the $$$$ out of Uncle Sam.

There are indeed problems in capitalism. Many Democrats and Republicans sold out their country to get cheaper labor, avoid unions, avoid taxes and regulations, etc. and so they went to evil, corrupt nations like China to get it, all while waving the American flag and claiming their patriotism and love for America. Many farmers and ranchers and big businesses have used illegal immigration to avoid paying paychecks that include taxes, messing with social security and medicare, etc. They want to avoid payroll taxes, etc. so they pull up their truck on the border and load it up with cheap illegals. Is that capitalism, or is it just corruption? Is that the pursuit of happiness, or the pursuit of dodging fees?

The OP here is concerned about a loss of religiosity and somehow blames capitalism, yet, capitalism is the only form of government around today that promotes and permits religion in a healthy way? It is the socialist mentality and leanings of the Democrats and these open socialist dirt bags like AOC and her "squad" that hate religion. Capitalism allows for religion and its free practice. In my state of California, it is our far left socialist dictator governor Newsom who has used COVID-19 to persecute the churches here. Can't blame capitalism. Blame our commie governor.

Capitalism is fundamentally destroying the planet? HOGWASH! The People's Republic of China is the filthiest polluter on earth!!!!! Saudi Arabia is a massive polluter! The former is communist/socialist, the latter is a monarchy. Look at the communist countries and third world countries that are really dictatorships across the world and you'll see pollution that will knock your socks off. OP, have you ever been to Thailand or the Philippines? check out Bangkok and Manila, one a monarchy/dictatorship, the second one now a de facto dictatorship, and check back with me to let me know how yummy the "green" movement is coming along there?

Now, the pity party I hear in the OP post also talks about how the poor middle class guy just can't get ahead.....bound in cruel shackles toward moving up and being successful. Really? How do you explain my wife? Raised dirt, I repeat, DIRT poor in the Philippines, came over here, went to school, has two bachelor's degrees, and is almost finished with a Master's degree in Nurse Practitioner, makes $52 per hour, and will make around $65-$75 per hour when she begins, God-willing? A poor gal who grew up with nothing speaks 3 languages, has almost 3 degrees plus a real estate license, etc.? Maybe.....hard work????

My lawn guy comes once a week and mows my lawn, trims everything, picks up fruit, cleans up the yard, etc. He is super modest. He paints houses and does house-sitting in the summer and winter. He is worth $500,000 now. How did he manage that?

My dad worked two jobs growing up, one was military. My wife and I worked and scrimped and saved and lived like paupers putting our kids through private school. At times we could scarcely make it and my parents chipped in. Families come together, man. It's what we do.

If people choose to own two boats, a massive RV, live in a palace, wear expensive clothes, have breast augmentation, drive a Lexus, and load up on debt, that is their choice. That is not mine. That is the beauty of capitalism. We all make choices. I've chosen to use my income to better my kids first. I've used it for travel, to help others, to try to be a good guy. Yeah, I've spent it on dumb stuff at times, like anyone else.

The alternative to your millennial-sounding OP post is socialism/communism.

POL POT/KILLING FIELDS
STALIN
LENIN
GULAGS
VENEZUELA
STEALING PRIVATE PROPERTY
MAO
GREAT LEAP FORWARD
VIETNAM
LAOS

take a look into the major mayhem and wholesale slaughter as well as religious persecution over the past 100 years and tell me which nations have perpetrated the worst slaughter---capitalist or commie. Let me know the worst polluters, the ones that robbed people of their liberty, and stole people's privacy.

Competition brings out the healthiest side of us if done correctly in sports or the free market.

I think you're conflating a lot of things in this post and just blanket-blasting capitalism. should America be more small businesses and less big business? ABSOLUTELY!!! America worked best when it was mom and pop shops and less Target, Amazon, Costco, Walmart for sure. Would capitalism be better served with less CEO's and more small business guys owning 2-3 shops around a town or two? Absolutely! So, the answer is to reform capitalism or live a more agrarian-based life than a communist/socialist 'utopia' in my view.

We live in a world with a lot of young people with dangerous ideas, and my suspicion is this millennial group and Gen Z or whatever they are called with be the death of freedom in the world. God help us.

TheLostCoin said:

Consumerism, escapist outlets, and the promotion of hedonism by Capitalism have led to a complete collapse of religiosity and even basic social structures that we consider "human." We live in a society that increasingly supports an idea of individualism that is beyond just ideas such as the "pursuit of happiness."

"Just do whatever makes you happy. Even if it's harmful to you and hurts others, as long as you aren't directly infringing on another person's right to 'be happy', you are okay." A standard of morality that is horrifying and inhibits the potential for people to be the best person they can be.

Capitalism has also promoted a culture of dominance, supremacy, and competition so fierce that even to just be above average and secure a future for his or her kids, a person often has to foresake his or her entire family, life, and happiness dedicated to a job to ascend a hierarchy from the position they find themselves at. Such hard work also corresponds with physical, mental, and spiritual deterioration; depression; and suicide.

And increasingly, capitalism continuously increases the gap between the rich and the poor, day by day making it more difficult to ascend the hierarchy. Not only does it do it naturally by a larger supply of the population thereby increasing competition, but it does so by even the way it influences society. And the ways it does this is disgusting; it gate-keeps accessibility into the market except for those who are the top 1% in natural talent or are rich enough; one just has to look at extravagant college costs; introduces hedonism in relationships between men and women which leads to dysfunctional families for the uneducated and more easily impressionable, made the impoverished people reliant on food that makes them fat and lazy, and encourages a lifestyle for people to spend extravagant amounts to either show-off or "escape" the world, among other things.

Let's not forget the fact that capitalism is fundamentally destroying the planet.

I can't help but feel that all of this is a result of capitalism alone, and day by day it becomes worse and worse.

How is it defensible at all for many of you Republicans / right-wingers?

Considering that all of this is a product of the system alone, is our consumerist, capitalist culture at all defensible?

Click to expand...

It seems to me that "conservative" Americans quite often present a false dichotomy between "capitalism" and "socialism", the latter of which is identified with the "communism" of nations such as the Soviet Union, Cuba or China (none of which actually were /are any sort of real communism because the leaders garnered up the wealth for themselves while the people had to manage with very little), as if there were no other shades between the two extreme poles.

Having lived in Finland, Sweden and the USA, I'd say that the Nordic system is quite far from communism but it guarantees equality of opportunity and humane quality of life to everyone in a manner which Americans can only dream of. In that sense, people living in the Nordic countries have way MORE freedom and liberty than folks in the States because they are not curtailed from their youth in regard to the quality of their education, access to healthcare and so forth by the income of their family.

And yet, even with the high taxes, the wealthy are still PLENTY rich and can afford multiple sports cars, nice houses, around-the-world-vacations, winter apartments in the Bahamas, whatever they want. They just lose some of the huge excess for the benefit of the many. Families in the middle-class can afford summer cottages, nice vacations and so forth. There are still very big differences between different social classes.

Given that everything we have is a gift from God of which we are but stewards, the Nordic model to me seems way more Christian than just staking charity on the choices of the individuals, most of whom do not care at all about anyone else except their family.

To claim that people have some kind of "God-given right" to unbridlebly hoard up extreme amounts of wealth while other people are literally starving, can't get healthcare and do not have the means (due to unbalanced structures of society) to climb up the ladder, is to me just silly.

gurneyhalleck1 said:

I'm not sure whether this is a devil's advocate post or a preachy one?

I'm a Republican....the Party of Lincoln. My observation about capitalism is simple. Of all the systems in the world, the United States is the only nation that has declared our liberty is GOD-GIVEN. Our rights come from God in their most natural form from the foundation of the Earth, and God, through His providence, has provided liberty throughout time immemorial. But each time such liberty was offered, it was usurped through the powers of evil and greedy men. So, the concept of the Framers is that our rights are issued from the Almighty, not from men. That is already a solid foundation upon which to build a country. Now, I understand the Founders were largely Protestants or Deists, but the concept is still a sounds one.

Capitalism in itself is not an evil one at all. The quoted idea of the pursuit of happiness you have in this post is not necessarily accurate in my humble opinion. Yes, individualism is there, which I find important, but so is FREE WILL. Orthodoxy and the Creation itself was built on free will. We must have the liberty of soul to choose good or evil, hatred or love. Capitalism, in its respect for individualism, allows us just that. I can choose to do good things with my money like helping others, supporting my church, giving to local shelters, helping out a friend in need, or saving my money for worthwhile reasons, or I can be a greedy weasel who can never get enough. St. John Chrysostom talks about the importance of free will and a free market place where the middle class to wealthier classes have room to donate money and offer their treasure to the less fortunate so that, not only the poor man gets blessings, but also the giver/wealthier man.

The Founding Fathers never spoke of the pursuit of happiness in terms of greed and wantonness, licentiousness or evil. Perhaps the OP is creating an anachronistic view of "happiness" based on 2020 standards. Perhaps it is the evil nature of modern people that is the problem, not the system? And perhaps a misuse of liberty and capitalism is far more to blame? I submit also that the infiltration of socialism into capitalism has also created disaster. Let me provide an example......

College loans. Set the rewind button back to 1955. You want to go to college. You don't have much money. You would borrow money from your local bank like a Wells Fargo, etc. to get a student loan. Loans were based market-wise on the debt of the time, what was doable for college. It was all a private sector economy where school was concerned. Colleges were $500-$800 per year. However, fast forward to the modern era of Uncle Sam/U.S. Government assuming the role in a socialist manner of handling college loans! Now that the U.S. Government has guaranteed the loans, colleges know the sky is the limit! Whereas in 1955, the universities knew they could only get what the banks would give, now universities knew that they could push for more. AND THEY DID! And they did some more...and some more....and more. Pretty soon outlandish sabbaticals kicked in, paying celebrities exorbitant fees to speak at the school, raising fees here and there, over and over.....

In 1997 I was at California State University Fresno. I paid $986 for one semester. With books and other materials, it came out realistically to around $2,000 per trimester. Now it is around $3,000 for tuition and $10,000 with books and fees!!! Wow! Fresno State, like any other higher education system, has milked the U.S. government until the udders are raw.

So here is the socialist in modern America, mostly young folks----"My life is so unfair! My parents and grandparents were out on their own kicking butt at age 21! They had hardly any debt and a job! I'm 25 and still living with my parents, saddled with debt, can't find a job! This is Trump's fault! This is capitalism's fault! This is a free market's fault! That Karl Marx fella is starting to sound pretty reasonable!"

Problem? It wasn't capitalism's fault that the kid got saddled with debt! It's the government's fault for creating a market for college wherein they are the ONLY means of debt. They eliminated all competition and created a system of endless owing and borrowing because colleges know they can and WILL get the $$$$ out of Uncle Sam.

There are indeed problems in capitalism. Many Democrats and Republicans sold out their country to get cheaper labor, avoid unions, avoid taxes and regulations, etc. and so they went to evil, corrupt nations like China to get it, all while waving the American flag and claiming their patriotism and love for America. Many farmers and ranchers and big businesses have used illegal immigration to avoid paying paychecks that include taxes, messing with social security and medicare, etc. They want to avoid payroll taxes, etc. so they pull up their truck on the border and load it up with cheap illegals. Is that capitalism, or is it just corruption? Is that the pursuit of happiness, or the pursuit of dodging fees?

The OP here is concerned about a loss of religiosity and somehow blames capitalism, yet, capitalism is the only form of government around today that promotes and permits religion in a healthy way? It is the socialist mentality and leanings of the Democrats and these open socialist dirt bags like AOC and her "squad" that hate religion. Capitalism allows for religion and its free practice. In my state of California, it is our far left socialist dictator governor Newsom who has used COVID-19 to persecute the churches here. Can't blame capitalism. Blame our commie governor.

Capitalism is fundamentally destroying the planet? HOGWASH! The People's Republic of China is the filthiest polluter on earth!!!!! Saudi Arabia is a massive polluter! The former is communist/socialist, the latter is a monarchy. Look at the communist countries and third world countries that are really dictatorships across the world and you'll see pollution that will knock your socks off. OP, have you ever been to Thailand or the Philippines? check out Bangkok and Manila, one a monarchy/dictatorship, the second one now a de facto dictatorship, and check back with me to let me know how yummy the "green" movement is coming along there?

Now, the pity party I hear in the OP post also talks about how the poor middle class guy just can't get ahead.....bound in cruel shackles toward moving up and being successful. Really? How do you explain my wife? Raised dirt, I repeat, DIRT poor in the Philippines, came over here, went to school, has two bachelor's degrees, and is almost finished with a Master's degree in Nurse Practitioner, makes $52 per hour, and will make around $65-$75 per hour when she begins, God-willing? A poor gal who grew up with nothing speaks 3 languages, has almost 3 degrees plus a real estate license, etc.? Maybe.....hard work????

My lawn guy comes once a week and mows my lawn, trims everything, picks up fruit, cleans up the yard, etc. He is super modest. He paints houses and does house-sitting in the summer and winter. He is worth $500,000 now. How did he manage that?

My dad worked two jobs growing up, one was military. My wife and I worked and scrimped and saved and lived like paupers putting our kids through private school. At times we could scarcely make it and my parents chipped in. Families come together, man. It's what we do.

If people choose to own two boats, a massive RV, live in a palace, wear expensive clothes, have breast augmentation, drive a Lexus, and load up on debt, that is their choice. That is not mine. That is the beauty of capitalism. We all make choices. I've chosen to use my income to better my kids first. I've used it for travel, to help others, to try to be a good guy. Yeah, I've spent it on dumb stuff at times, like anyone else.

The alternative to your millennial-sounding OP post is socialism/communism.

POL POT/KILLING FIELDS
STALIN
LENIN
GULAGS
VENEZUELA
STEALING PRIVATE PROPERTY
MAO
GREAT LEAP FORWARD
VIETNAM
LAOS

take a look into the major mayhem and wholesale slaughter as well as religious persecution over the past 100 years and tell me which nations have perpetrated the worst slaughter---capitalist or commie. Let me know the worst polluters, the ones that robbed people of their liberty, and stole people's privacy.

Competition brings out the healthiest side of us if done correctly in sports or the free market.

I think you're conflating a lot of things in this post and just blanket-blasting capitalism. should America be more small businesses and less big business? ABSOLUTELY!!! America worked best when it was mom and pop shops and less Target, Amazon, Costco, Walmart for sure. Would capitalism be better served with less CEO's and more small business guys owning 2-3 shops around a town or two? Absolutely! So, the answer is to reform capitalism or live a more agrarian-based life than a communist/socialist 'utopia' in my view.

We live in a world with a lot of young people with dangerous ideas, and my suspicion is this millennial group and Gen Z or whatever they are called with be the death of freedom in the world. God help us.

Click to expand...

Um - yeah - where can I vote for Gurney this November??!!!