If so, wouldn’t that give incumbents and mass media (which can never be perfectly objective, no matter what anyone says) inordinate power?

GE, what would you do if I thought being a capitalist was evil?

I’d ask you what you meant by capitalism. If you said, “what we have now” or “what Marx described,” I’d say, YOU’RE RIGHT.

If you said, “a system where people mix their labor with the land and engage in peaceful, nonviolent voluntary exchange,” I’d say that you were pure evil.

The coercively monopolized state.

Apparently not. Also, in socialists’ perception of reality, it appears the crisis was caused by disastrous laissez-faire policies like 1% interest rates by the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Community Reinvestment Act. (If that’s what laissez-faire means, I wonder why socialists seem to dislike it so much.)

Though, such disagreements are increasingly tolerable the more said socialists support “decentraliz[ation]“.

Nader talks abt making sure the corporations can not dominate the government. This is the sort of social democratic/democratic socialist government that would be most effective in avoiding the recent laisse faire excesses that lead to chaos and barbarism.

I think as the economy spirals downward, the Left will lose majopr opportunities for a broader audience if all they propose is old industrial age ideas; for one, industrialism is over, and two the authoritarianism that came with that old school statist socialism is completely discredited.

I imagine they would not exist, since they get their corporate charter, corporate personhood, and nonconcensual limited liability (not to mention massive direct and indirect corporate welfare) from…yep, government.

Isn’t the latest trillion dollar corporate bailout by government, or the trillions spent by it on wars on behalf of corporations, not enough for most anti-corporate people to understand – far from being a check on corporations, government is their creator and enabler, destroyer of their small business competition, and guarantor of their profits?

Putting government in charge of policing corporations is truly putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.

Well, it seems difficult to find one site charting write-in status, but it depresses me that candidates seriously running for office didn’t take the opportunity to have the chance to be elected by more people. It’s an impressive feat by Frank Moore, with the quote “Like party and weed? Vote Frank Moore” on his site.

True free markets and intentional communes are not evil.

Why would any citizen get a loan to start a business if every company is nationalized, and thus owning one’s own business is presumably illegal? Seems like self-incrimination to me. Or perhaps since only “for-profit” business is nationalized, the government would allow an entreprenuer to operate only until the venture starts to turn a profit, then they kick down the door take it.

I’d go farther than you and say the criminals should be Ceausescu-ed. I’ve said so many times.

The difference between Moore and the Wall Street socialists is that Moore has no power and they do. Moore, to my knowledge, has committed no crimes, since voicing evil opinions is no crime at all. The Wall Street socialists have put their evil opinions into action in the name of mass murder and misery, and they should pay for those crimes with their lives.

LOL!! You really need to get a gig writing stand up comedy, G.E.

While I think the SPUSA’ program is outdated and too industrial age in focus, the sentiment is on the mark.

“Pure evil”, might better describe the crooks and scammers in the banking system and Wall Street, like these:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/17/executivesalaries-banking

Or, the reports that Paulson’s posse initially focused tax payer give aways on political cronies corporations.

That’s evil, not pure evil, like Hitler-evil, but still, very very evil.

Now, I’m not suggesting the crooks that run the economy into this depression should be “Ceausescu-ed” on Christmas morning, but these people should be doing long hard time in Levanworth, not stealing taxpayer money.

I think the SPUSA, and much of the Old Left and 60s-originated-New Left, fail to perceive that a mixed economy, where certain fundamental institutions, like utilities, etc, should be publicly owned, but that capitalism on the small scale, small businesses, it works very efficiently, with socially mandated regulations on workplace safety, and minimum wage etc it is an excellent mechanism for product and service exchange. It’s just once the capitalist enterprises get too big that they turn into corrupt rapacious gangs.