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To: kabar
You sound like an OWS Marxist ascribing capitalism in and of itself as sinister.

Nice try. You hear my comments that way because you have raised an economic system to be your deity and can not tolerate even a whiff of criticism.

I view capitalism as the natural order of a man's commercial interactions with others. Compare that to the family which is the natural order of man's private life. There are basic rules of duty, trust and care that govern both systems, however, and when these rules are transgressed with regularity, harm takes place.

When immorality is introduced into the family, the family itself becomes a breeding ground for all sorts of evils--domestic abuse, addiction, sloth, poverty, mental illness, etc. The members of the family become miserable and eventually, when the corruption becomes too great, the family is destroyed.

Notice, by saying this, I am not condemning the family as an institution in any way. I am condemning the corruption of the family.

Similarly, with capitalism, when corruption is introduced into the system and allowed to flourish, it will breed misery and the eventual destruction of the system.

Again, this is not a difficult concept to grasp. In the cases of both the family and the capitalist system, they function best when the participants are good, upstanding, and moral people. And in my opinion, the best ethical system for regulating both the family and capitalism is traditional Christianity.
247 posted on 01/13/2012 11:59:27 PM PST by Antoninus (Mitt Romney -- attempting to execute a hostile take-over of the Republican Party.)
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To: Antoninus
...you have raised an economic system to be your deity and can not tolerate even a whiff of criticism.

Spot on.

When immorality is introduced into the family, the family itself becomes a breeding ground for all sorts of evils--domestic abuse, addiction, sloth, poverty, mental illness, etc.... Notice, by saying this, I am not condemning the family as an institution in any way. I am condemning the corruption of the family.

Well said.

257 posted on 01/14/2012 1:49:48 AM PST by Finny ("Raise hell. Vote smart." -- Ted Nugent)
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To: Antoninus

dittos


263 posted on 01/14/2012 5:44:43 AM PST by dennisw (A nation of sheep breeds a government of Democrat wolves!)
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To: Antoninus
Similarly, with capitalism, when corruption is introduced into the system and allowed to flourish, it will breed misery and the eventual destruction of the system.

Isn't that true of any system, institution, organization, etc.? You seem to be missing the point over and over again. Using the adjective ethical or unethical before the word capitalism is really meaningless. Capitalism is an economic system that includes elements such as private ownership of the means of production, creation of goods or services for profit or income, the accumulation of capital, competitive markets, voluntary exchange and wage labor.

The right of the individual to keep the fruits of one's labor, i.e., property, is part of our inalienable rights that is enshrined in the Constitution and given by our Creator.

Again, this is not a difficult concept to grasp. In the cases of both the family and the capitalist system, they function best when the participants are good, upstanding, and moral people. And in my opinion, the best ethical system for regulating both the family and capitalism is traditional Christianity.

You seem to have a difficult time grasping that capitalism is not a moral system with a code of ethics. It can and has worked in countries and places that aren't Christian. It is an economic system. Max Weber understood this better than most:

The impulse to acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money, has in itself nothing to do with capitalism. This impulse exists and has existed among waiters, physicians, coachmen, artists, prostitutes, dishonest officials, soldiers, nobles, crusaders, gamblers, and beggars. One may say that it has been common to all sorts and conditions of men at all times and in all countries of the earth, wherever the objective possibility of it is or has been given. It should be taught in the kindergarten of cultural history that this naïve idea of capitalism must be given up once and for all.

The genius of our Founding Fathers and the Constitution is that they recognized human nature for what it is and created a system to harness those basic human motivations. The problem with the Left and systems like Communism and socialism is that they try to change human nature to achieve some utopian vision that they have created. If capitalism has been corrupted in this country, then the biggest culprit is government, which has interfered in the workings of the marketplace through regulation, taxes, etc. in an attempt to change human behavior and obtain some utopian result.

278 posted on 01/14/2012 7:59:50 AM PST by kabar
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