>Those of you interested in free market solutions should really look at the
>Feb. '97 issue of Atlantic Monthly in which the cover article is "The
>Capitalist Threat" written by George Soros, one of the greatest, most
>successful capitalists of all time.
>
>He says, "Insofar as there is a dominant belief in our society today, it is
>a belief in the magic of the marketplace. The doctrine of laissez-faire
>capitalism hold that the common good is best served by the uninhitited
>pursuit of self-interrest. Unless it is tempered by the recognition of a
>common interest that ought to take preference over particular interests, our
>present system--is liable to break down."
>
>"By taking the conditions of supply and demand as given and declaring
>government intervention the ultimate evel, laissez-faire ideology has
>effectively banished income or wealth redistribution....The
>laissez-faire-argument relies on the same tacit appeal to perfection as does
>communism. It claims that if redistribution causes inefficiencies and
>distortions, the problems can be solved by eliminating redistribution...But
>perfection is unattainable. Wealth does accumulate in the hands of its
>owners, and if there is no mechanism for redistribution, the inequities can
>become intolerable."
>
>The problem that I see with the market is that it is concerned only with
>money. People don't buy things, money does. If you don't have money-- more
>than half the people on the planet are outside the global economy--you get
>no vote. You don't count. You are worse than a non-person, you are a
>global liability. Any system which reduces people to non-entities needs
>fixing.
>
Steve, Soros' comments are totally and utterly self-serving. Don't be
fooled! He is doing what people who get to the top have always done:
trying to stay there by toadying to government. Exactly the same things
were said by political businessmen towards the end of the 19th century,
and the support they gave to the concept of big government led to the
wonderful results we've had for most of this century.
This is the voice of mercantilism, not capitalism. Given that
literature reflects opinion, just look at the very first thing he says,
then go to any bookshop in town and count the number of books, popular
and academic, that support laissez faire, then count the number of books
that support intervention. Get the picture?
He is, quite simply, lying through his teeth. Why? He wants to make
the state more powerful because, being rich, he is in a position to
influence a powerful state to do things to his advantage, to make him
richer. It doesn't matter a damn to him what ideology the state upholds
- socialism, fascism, it's all the same, just so long as the state
becomes a more powerful instrument *in itself*. If the USA were even
more fascist than it is he would be singing a fascist song and
critiquing laissez faire from a fascist (e.g. nationalistic) point of
view and you wouldn't hear a peep about the poor and the disadvantaged.
As it is, the present flavour is towards the left, so he falls in with
that.
You can bet your bottom dollar there wouldn't be very much re-distribution
of *his* money going on!
Sorry if this is a bit of a rant, but I was just shocked by the utter
cynical evil of what he was saying, and saddened by how you seemed to be
taken in.
Guru George