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Free markets and capitalism are not tied to democracy. When democracies vote for social democratic governments which support the majority desire for more equality as opposed to private property protection, capitalism is not being support. In this way democracy acts as a impediment to the free market and right to property.

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Nothing like redefining the problem to try to indicate that capitalism actually has a faintly beating heart. The truth is also that capitalism can’t stand free speech, the right of assembly, or the right to sue, and in the name of profit does everything it can to diminish everybody else’s rights, including those of its employees, the consumer and anybody else who gets in its way. Perhaps most importantly, todays corporate capitalism isolates and immunizes corporate officers from personal responsibility for the evils that they create.

And your mercantilism/capitalism distinction is equally sophistic.

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So in your mind, National Socialism was pure capitalism? Much of the British Empire was mercantilist rather than capitalist. Capitalism as explained by Adam Smith recognizes the right of property ownership as indispensible to personal liberty. Since slaves didn’t even own their own bodies and could not offer their labor at market places, pre-abolition America was hardly capitalism in its purest form either.

Adam Smith wrote as a moral philosopher. The dismal science was only in its nascence. The capitalism he describes, and which later economists such as Milton Friedman championed, is a bulwark of liberty. Personal and economic liberty are mutually supportive and inextricable.

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We all know that it is entirely possible to have a purely capitalistic yet profoundly repressive system. Nazi Germany and the nastier bits of the British Empire come to mind, as of course does the pre-abolition US.

Yet there does seem something different about post-Mao China. I believe, for example, that there has been some relaxation of the “one child” policy and there is more freedom of movement over there. One does not hear as much about what seemed like summary executions, with a bill for the bullet sent to the family.

Certainly their culture does seem more open to some things Western, like the NBA and pop music. Even their attitude towards Christianity seems to have evolved just a bit.

But they are still light years away from enjoying the kinds of constitutional protections which we, for the most part, enjoy. One has the feeling that with the flick of a finger, the leadership could extinguish all of that.

llama: The folks who run the IOC are, for the most part, wealthy long before they join. To be sure, some profit considerably from membership, but I suspect that economic gain is secondary to the power rush they all get.

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Then the OOC sold the rights to these games for an additional $4 billion with very little overhead and costs against it, since the host country pays all the associated costs. If the Left knew the profit margins for the OOC are 97.5% of Billions of dollars, they would claim the OOC is the cause of all the worlds ills and then tax them to steal all of it.

The Olympics remain the most profitable business ….eeerrrr… I mean the finest athletic test to find the best athletes in the world.

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What is your basis for this?

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But I guess those guys aren’t in the business of speaking truth to power…

And by the way, the IOC, composed of plutocrats from around the world has never been the least bit principled about human rights. They knew exactly what they were getting with China; my impression is that at the time they awarded the games, eight years ago, China was a lot worse than it is today.

Lester: Whom do you trust? Rush? Sean? The SBC?

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