Why has no country or culture practiced Capitalism? What then IS the system of economic practices that you always thought was Capitalism? What can an Individual do to promote Capitalist economics?

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        My Webster's defines Capitalism as: "a system under which the production and distribution of goods are privately managed" and also as "free enterprise". The latter is defined as "a doctrine or type of economy under which private business is allowed to operate with minimal government control."

        Still think the U.S.A. is a Capitalist free enterprise?

        Yeah, right!: No FCC or SEC or FDA or EPA or IRS or DEA. No Department of Labor, no Workers Comp, no 401K or ESOP regulations. And more recently we have the NAFTA tariffs and the EEU and don't forget the WMF and the New World Order (whoever they are). And very importantly, the threats to Individual Liberty written into the Patriot Acts, both I and II.

        "Free enterprise"? Hah!

        Capitalism is incompatible with greed. Capitalism is incompatible with economic slavery. Capitalism is incompatible with massively lowered Quality of Life.

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        I re-read "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" for this essay, and the odd thing about that book is that Ayn Rand never defines Capitalism per se. Mostly the collection of essays by her and a few others are about the bad, bad things done in the name of Capitalism to the American businessman under the then-as-now extant "mixed economy" (with some reference to economies elsewhere).

        This omission provides an opening for me to write down what I see Capitalism is by definition and design, and also to spell out the Working Minds viewpoint.

        In Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy, she repeatedly states that Reason gives man the right to exist, and that the pursuit of one's own survival and happiness as an Individual is a corollary right. Without the existence and practice of that right, we are simply slaves.

        That then gives every Individual the right for free [uncoerced] trade for his/her labors – whether physical labor or service work or office work, or management of employees, or the creation of intellectual property (art, literature, gadgets, entertainment). In a Capitalist economy, market controls by government are reduced to the barest minimum, and the open and unregulated marketplace determines the dollar value of each career field or product or idea.

        In a free marketplace, efficient producers and workers will see increased value and demand, while inefficient or shoddy producers and workers will find less and less demand.

THE LIVING WAGE

        Capitalism operates quite differently for workers and for management and for entrepreneurs.

        In Objectivism (philosophy) and in Capitalism (economics), the worker has the natural right to his/her Life (survival); he/she has a right to free trade for his/her labor (the means to survival); and those two rights lead to a third right: a right to a Living Wage. For how can a worker have the Objectivist right to a Life UNLESS he/she can work the legislated 40-hour work week and actually make a living, with the hope of making a better living thru hard work, training, thrift, and persistance.

        (This is absolutely NOT the Collectivist's anti-Reason false right to a living, which concept transfers wealth generated by the workers to non-producing looters.)

        The right to a Living Wage does not exist in America today, and is not likely to be instituted short of revolution. Almost 30% of households in America today struggle along on two jobs to make ends (barely) meet, which is very Dickensian. Either both parents work or one parent works multiple full or part-time jobs, or a single parent works multiple jobs, and all have next to no benefits. In all such cases, the children are without supervision, except by the deluge of mind-numbing input that they get from the Oligarchy-owned media.

        What happened to the free-time evenings and weekends of the past? The Oligarchy took it away by force.

        As an arbitrary interim figure, I say that any job paying less than $10 per hour is not a Living Wage. In fact, such payment is indentured servitude, economic slavery, the only escape from which is death or madness or political upheaval – the 'R' word, revolution.

        I likewise previously defined the arbitrary interim Benchmark figure for executives – if the U.S. President, the 'Leader of the Free World', is paid only half a million dollars (including estimated perks) per year, then how can any executive, any other person on the planet claim to be worth hundreds, even thousands of times the present 'worth' of their able and hard-working employees?

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