WHERE HAS CAPITALISM GONE?

As a committed Socialist and a firm believer in balance and fairness for all I am often referred to by the disparaging description of 'red ragger'. On the contrary I am surprisingly a keen supporter not only of true democracy (representing the electors not the party) and true capitalism (the free market opportunity).

Capitalism:

I buy something from your shop which you buy from a manufacturer, who pays workers to make the product I buy. They, the employees in turn, with their wages, buy my product which I pay someone else to deliver from a factory of workers making my whatnots. That is a manufacturing economy.

I walk into a Sandwich shop which makes me a salad roll. They made up the roll from ingredients, hopefully, sourced locally, grown by small farmers producing high quality fruit and vegetables which they sell to the roll-maker. The grower then buys my product and the cycle starts again. This is an agricultural economy.

My car breaks down and I take it to a garage and engage, hopefully a skilled mechanic, to make the necessary repairs they identify. I pay the mechanic either with my product (bartering) or with the money you gave me when you bought my whatnot. This is called a service economy.

In a way all of these different activities interact with each other and an advanced economy produces everything its population needs and sells the surplus overseas.

Communism:

If you take all three examples given above and change that free choice to ownership by the state, where the government controls how much is made, when it is made, where it is sold and at what price. They determine how much workers will be paid, the hours they work, the holidays they don't get and set the rate for bribes. It's like Animal Farm everyone is equal, some are more equal than others and we will determine how equal you are.

The only good side to Communism is the governments ability to direct entire economies and populations, see also China, unlike the exciting mess of capitalism, in to producing things faster to the detriment of the quality that competition creates.

Socialism:

This is where I stand. Socialism is really Capitalism with the exception that the investors, the shareholders, the management and the future of the company are all determined by the members or employees. In a sense we already have a form of socialism with the RACV or Credit Unions, members joining together for a common cause, or Dairy Farmers who, as individuals cannot provide both supply and distribution themselves so join together as a group to market their product.

Socialism is NOT Communism. Socialism is those who create the economy should share in the economy, reward for hard work and dare I say it, nothing for the slackers and some social help for those who can neither work nor malinger.

Look at our planet peoples. We all stuck on this rock together so we should work together. The rich are getting richer through corporate tribalism and as we see, tribalism (Corporations) destroy everything in their path and entire economies for the sake of a few Boardroom Emirs.