No flame - do you prefer a structure more similar to socialism? Because that's what the bold comments imply.
It's really a shame that socialism has become such a dirty word these days.
There's two extremes in this argument Pure Capitalism and Communism. Socialism resides somewhere in between (depending on your flavor).
IMHO communism sucks. It begs people to aspire to the mean and never excel. I honestly can't see a large society ever succeeding with this.
BUT pure capitalism can suck nearly as badly. When companies can dictate wages and have total control over their employees, they generally don't do the right thing (and there are some BIG exceptions to this). But there is a reason that the government stepped in over the lifetime of our country and put in regulations that dictate safety, hours worked, and minimum wage. There's a reason that unions were formed in the 1st place. And that reason is NOT because most companies were doing a good job taking care of their workers. Look at the number of companies that have moved operations to countries that pay their workers virtually nothing and have kids working 12-16 hour days.
Unlike most, I don't blame the companies AT ALL. The purpose of business is to make money. Period. Companies should and mostly do act in their best interest where the bottom line is actually the bottom line. And the bigger that bottom line is, the better they are doing. Expecting a company whose 1st priority is to make a profit and survive to do the "right" thing is naive at best and just plain stupid IMHO.
That's where the government and unions have their place. It's their job to say: No, you can't take poor kids that should be in school and playing with their fiends and work them 60 hours a week. If you work people over a certain number of hours, you have to pay them more for those hours. Yes, you do have to provide reasonable safe guards to keep employees from getting hurt on the job. No, you can't simply dump your waste in the nearest landfill/river. And yes the government and unions have overstepped themselves quite a few times, but to say that they don't have a place in regulation of for profit companies is figuratively letting the fox guard the hen house. For profit companies can never effectively regulate themselves and expecting them to is pure stupidity.
IMHO, capitalist (for profit) groups can do a better/cheaper/more effective job at MOST things. The key here is MOST. Providing a product or service, a private company can do a better job than the government AND turn a profit while doing so. And that's awesome. It's the lifeblood of our country. But (again IMHO) there are some things that don't lend themselves to this model. Health care, prisons, and education are areas where I don't think that the 1st priority of the folks in charge should be to turn a profit. I'd like to think that the hospital would put patient care 1st, the prison would have reform/punishment as a top priority, and the education system would have education of students as their main goal.
Asking a company that HAS to turn a profit or they die, to put something else ahead of profit is practically begging for everyone (including the company) to fail. The services above are best run by the government or non profits. That's socialism. Where SOME (not all or even most) things are government controlled. I'm OK with a very mild form of socialism like this.
