haha , glad to hear it! We "aware" Americans do exist, however we are in the minority and we generally reside in more "diverse" areas of the States i.e. NYC and Cali, as we are generally confined to academic institutions (colleges and universities) that have not been tampered.
Sorry mate - Know exactly what your saying... I should wait to spark up until after ive typed I just meant to say that no one answer is right - and no one system will work. Theyve all been tried and failed. Sorry to put it across in such a poor way... Didnt mean to attempt to annoy you or anything. I just dont think Marx had all the answers - And I certainly didnt want to suggest racism in anyway - its just everytime one man is followed for his beliefs - something goes wrong! Or it works unitl that person dies, someone picks up the baton and fucks the system with greed. I personally think all systems should be adopted for specific needs - thats all... Not one, then another, then another... I should probably not use food analogies either- its just ive got the munchies!
The way I see it, capitalism represents unregulated markets that only enforce laws to prevent against force and fraud. Once you start central planning you've delved into socialism, or at least become "socialistic". If someone is in favor of combatting market forces they are a socialist. Yes, but where Marx, the lazy freeloader, was wrong in his theory is that the collective doesn't know anything about running an economy, just like him. They will fail just as hard as the bureaucratic oafs at the center of a communist economy. Market forces are too powerful to be contained, that's what the boom and bust cycle of keynesianism tells us. He saw the socialism as the transition to communism from capitalism, which is basically where we are now with our heavily planned "mixed" markets. How do you not see this? What do you mean "today's capitalism"? There is no capitalism, and there is no neoliberalism. I thought neoliberalism favored balanced budgets, privatization, moderately progressive taxes, market determined interest rates, deregulation... Where on Earth do you see this happening, other than maybe China? Enforce deregulation = don't write laws. Enforce laissez faire economics = protect basic rights. Enforce lax regulation = you're repeating yourself. Centralizing credit in the hands of the state is a central tenet of the communist manifesto. Sooo... what are you talking about? An economic system of central planning is used to ensure the existence of capitalism? Are you mad?
We didn't really have a choice, if it weren't for Europe the US would be doing great right now. Britain suicided itself into Germany in WW2, and our awesome capitalist country was the only one that could save your asses. The process of entering the wars turned us into a permanent war economy, and after Britain collapsed the elites jumped ship and the US took over the informal empire.
It's funny, but Marxism and Socialism are based on some of the same theories that Adam Smith's capitalism is. For example, the labor theory of value, originally Smith's idea, was adopted by Karl Marx. Iron-knee! Anyways, Socialism doesn't work, because it's based on Central Economic Planning. As we learned from F.A. Hayek, and Ludwing Von Mises, there exists a 'knowledge' problem, that CEP's can't account for, and thus we get the 'Economic Calculation Problem'.
Actually this is incorrect. Socialism refers to who owns the means of production. Under capitalist society, capitalists own the means of production obviously. But in a socialist society, the means of production are controlled by the WORKERS. The second major tenant of socialism is direct and equal control by the workers who control the means of production. This would be attained through methods of direct democracy, workers councils, and voting systems in which any worker could take part if they volunteer to do so. So as you can see, government really doesn't have anything to do with socialism. The reason why this is such a common misconception is because a lot of past governments (USSR, Cuba, China, etc) have claimed to be socialist when they were nothing near the true definition as theorized by Marx and Engels. Even though those governments CLAIMED that the workers had control over the means of production, this was obviously not the case because the governments owned everything. The government in such a situation is therefore considered a capitalist because it owns the means of production and profits off of the labor of the workers who have no real control. To differentiate these completely nationalized economies from capitalist economies with private sectors, we call them "state capitalist".