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kleinbl00  ·  4786 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Is Capitalism the Villain?
You misunderstand much of the macroeconomics at play, and you misunderstand much of the ideology that drives it.

OWS is driven by an electorate that feels cheated. They have abided by their side of the social contract yet they do not feel they are being treated fairly.

The Euro crisis is also driven by an electorate that feels cheated. They were promised one thing and when the money ran out, it is being taken away.

In both cases, the money that was promised went somewhere else. With the OWS crowd, they feel that their money went to the rich. With the Eurozone crowd, their money went into national debt. I could make an argument for either to be a failure of central planning, and I could make an argument for either to be a failure of capitalism.

The "capitalism vs. communism" trope is one that hides an awful lot of mistruth. Realistically speaking, the past 100 years have been about two ideologies fighting it out and those who hew the closest to either are the ones that suffer the most. The more fervently a country practices communism, the more likely it is to fall to the predations of a people whose efforts do not reward them with upward mobility. The Soviet Union fell because egalitarianism does not extend to people you don't know and never will. Yet the more fervently a country practices capitalism, the more likely it is to fall to the predations of a people whose efforts are inordinately rewarded at the expense of their fellow man. "Wealth concentration" is a problem faced by all despotic nations, no matter their tenure on the G20.

That covers the United States and the USSR, who were locked in a costly and destructive ideological battle from the fall of the Tsar. Most of the world, however, determined that both systems had problems and cherry-picked some blend of the two. To no one's surprise, these are the economies that are growing the fastest as the United States stumbles and the former Soviet nations deal with kleptocracy.

"Is capitalism the villain?" No, but it is an extreme. The capitalism we practice isn't as extreme as it could be, nor is it as mild. "Is communism the villain?" Again, just another extreme.

The villain is anyone who puts ideology ahead of practicality. That's been the truth since the dawn of history.