Does the current financial crisis mean the end of the idea of capitalism, free trade and globalisation? Because it originated from a country that was the strongest proponent of capitalism and those who are spared from its worst effects are sheltered economies which follow mixed or socialist fiscal policies. It has the world in financial turmoil and the worst is yet to come. In its wake, capitalism, free trade and globalisation have suddenly become dirty words.
To me, the attractiveness of a system depends on the amount of freedom which it provides to the individual. The more freedom a system provides to the individual, the more attractive it is. And the more the state wants to control your freedoms and the more it wants to make decisions on your behalf, the less attractive it is to me.
The current financial crisis has led western governments to take steps which reek of socialism and I think that was the wrong thing to do. Because immediate pain might have been avoided but a bad precedent has been set.
Capitalism is the only natural system which allows individuals the freedom to realize their full potential and enjoy the fruits of their hard work. But with freedom comes responsibility. The old adage of 'Buyers Beware' is as applicable today as it always was. And whoever did not do their due diligence before getting into the fray to make some quick money, deserved to feel the pain and the losses and to die a natural death to make way for another more responsible entity to take its place.
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I fully endorse your view that freedom should not be tampered with as far as possible. Those want to make a quick buck deserve to feel the pain.
The only problem I see is that because of their greed, there are millions of innocent citizens who are suffering while many of the guilty are getting away with "golden parachutes". So, in my lay man's view, some controls are needed but these should be minimal and as unobtrusive as possible.
Alan Greenspan in his book The Age of Turbulence, does not even mention the term - free enterprise - nor as it in the index of his book.
See http://www.bizarrepolitics.com/greenspan-dancing-in-the-dark
He does take alot of time writing about New Harmony, a communitarian economic experiment as a way of saying that the free market accomodates human nature the best.
Then, more recently, he tells Congress that he was surprised that the financial communities did not police themselves.
It seems the free enterprise system has been divorced from the free market system. Capitalism should be about the free enterprise system being available to all. It is not and should be prefaced these days as Raw Capitalism.
Our most popular article from ezine articles is - Lend Lease was real Free Trade and not Chopped Liver as in the Globalist Free Trade World. President Roosevelt said he was not going to let the dollar ( or lack of dollars ) stand in his way. He start supplying our allies goods without any upfront money. ( Actually, the U.S. never got paid back on many of the goods rushed to our allies prior to World War 2.)
His actions and the war, triggered the most awesome industrial power the world has ever known. He actually created it with real "free trade".
It won World War 2.
After the war, the Marshall Plan, with the backing of this powerful industrial might, we duplicated local value added economies in Europe and Asia.
Then, the USA chopped up all this success instead of duplicating it and spread the pieces around the world. Globalization fragmented almost everything in its path.
In essence, the USA has lost World War 2 , fify years after the fighting stopped. A new kind of combat took over. It translated into an untested economy based on making money on money instead of making things.
Free trade came. It was not really trade as historically practiced and defined. Free trade is based on moving production and factories from place to place for the sake of cheaper labor while a new economic model came that was based on making money on money instead of making things.
Greenspan discounted the Marshall Plan and does not even mention the Lend Lease Program. It comes down to this . You can not do business with people who do not have money. And the devaluation of labor and workers affect the whole and the economies based on making money on money instead of making things backfire.
See http://tapsworldmobile.filetap.com http://tapsearchglobal.blogspot.com
http://vimu.com/inbox/49/
The first question to ask before trying to define anything, is this:
Who said we had to compete like this in a global economic arena? It is obvious the process did not evovle in any natural economic fashion.
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