Quote Originally Posted by Thondalar View Post
I'll blame the victim here, too, to a degree. As I've said countless times, there is no perfect system. We have to go with the most perfect. We could argue about what happened with Enron, and Worldcom, and Tyco, and others for a while, but it would be pointless. As I've stated before, people will be people. Some people are selfish and greedy...the system won't change that. The only difference between a Capitalist society and a Communist society is that in a Capitalist society, the rich people are the business owners, and in a Communist society the rich people are the Ruling Elite. In a Capitalist society, the rich business owners make everyone else more wealthy because it contributes to their own wealth...in a Communist society, the Ruling Elite just rape the common people for everything they have and keep it for themselves. I know which side of that fence I'm on. If the employees and shareholders of these companies did their due diligence, we probably could have avoided these scenarios.

History has proven, time and again, that personal responsibility is the only way to make things work. Any time you give over that responsibility, whether it's to a corporation or a government, you're setting yourself up for failure.



Well, yeah. I'm a big believer in personal responsibility...there is ample evidence that the great depression was caused by everyone blowing up their credit, and then the bank scare of 1930 taking all the backing out of that credit...the history is there for the reading. Here's a good study about it by that bastion of Conservative Thought that is UC-Berkely:

http://www.bis.org/publ/work137.pdf



Well, yes. If we hadn't bailed out the banks, what would have happened? Probably another depression, since the same factors were in place that caused the first one. I'm all for destructive creationism. By softening the blow of failure, we almost certainly insure future failure. The lessons learned from the first depression were lost on the common man three generations later...that's not surprising. We do a terrible job of educating our young.
Where to start? To begin with, nobody's arguing for a "Communist system" except nutjobs. We're just arguing for more of the mixed economy that we've had for quite a long time (which did better than what came before, but you'll never admit that).

"Personal responsibility" certainly can't be trusted. If too much credit is available, people will exploit it.

After a period of DEREGULATION (that goal of yours) (The 1920s) too much credit was available. When it is available people take advantage of it. It broke the economy. Banks and companies always want this because they don't care about society's best interests.

A racist ass from a town right near mine (Carter Glass) was naturally skeptical about banks. He was right and made the Glass-Steagall Act to stop them doing some of their fuckery.

Companies, lobbyists, conservatives, and some Democrats decided to destroy this law. Too much credit became available again.

This is your dream. DEREGULATION. It destroyed the economy again.

I'm going to end with your quote because you're an excellent example.

Quote Originally Posted by Thondalar
The lessons learned from the first depression were lost on the common man three generations later...that's not surprising. We do a terrible job of educating our young.