I remember having a chat with a Socialist friend, and gave the example of boats. Boats are labour intensive to make, require a lot of materials and engineering skill, and ultimately a small boat builder might only be able to make a handful a year, if that.

How do you decide who gets a boat? Simple, money decides… you set the price at a level at which the boat sells and there’s exactly one person who wants that particular boat at that particular price.

Capitalism’s great, I said, because it allows us to have boats (if we can afford them).

My Socialist friend replied, Ah, but under socialism, you’d have the time to build your own boat and it would be shared with the community so everyone would have access to sailing.

That really sticks in my head as the day I realised Socialism was mad.

It’s the old problem of useless labels again. Is this an English Language problem, that words mean whatever people want them to mean?

Capitalism meaning free markets is a modern redefinition of the term, and one rejected by most on the anti-capitalist left (although sadly many conflate free markets with currently existing markets – having been encouraged to by the anti-free market right).

Add in that the existing economic system is not a system of free markets, but a system of state/business rule where the two are now so intertwined that they are difficult to separate.
Its the system of regulation to eliminate competition and induce ‘stability’ for elites whilst ensuring the rest of the population is kept at a comfortable minimum standard of living through welfare to prevent redistribution of power along more liberal, egalitarian lines.

For most people, capitalism and free markets are what we have now, which is what is not working.

Wen the American Constitution was written, America was fortunate to be have some exceptionally able people . There is no evidence that any country since has had such able people to write an constitution.

Regulation is likley to become a massive job creation scheme for the mediocre- where is the modern day Jefferson, Washington, Adams,Lincoln, Churchill, Gladstone, Lloyd George, Atlee, Keynes ?

Stu, where do I sign up to become one of the watery bints? What a job!

It appears that there were peaceful protesters in London yesterday, in a ‘Climate Camp’, but the police didn’t attack them or cordon them off so we didn’t see them on the news. Funny how the police only seem to go for the ones who are smashing up buildings…

(Yours is the first blogroll I’ve been added to I think, thanks! Even if it is under the heading ‘not yet lib dem’. Tssk ; )