Zimbabwe Coup

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I wasn't defending unrestrained capitalism I was defending capitalism and yes life if better because of it but its not good for everyone, nor is it in any system. You have a twelve year old daughter and I truly hope she does have a good life, but that is not 100% guaranteed so many things could go wrong with her life. Whether you agree with me or not doesn't change the fact that there are people who lives are mostly suffering and they wouldn't have that suffering if their parents didn't create another person without consent.

I don't have a problem with capitalism - - as long as it's regulated and restrained, and with enough socialism involved to make sure those in need aren't left behind to die. Were it not for that socialistic element in government, my daughter's life would be a lot worse. What the world needs is a well balanced capitalist/socialist system, where everyone has the chance to get ahead, but where no one is left behind.
This life isn't perfect, but the high points make it worthwhile. I'll take that over nonexistence.

Public services and benefits are not socialist. Socialism is the means of production being socially owned either by the workers directly or society at whole. People often call the Nordic countries socialist they are capitalist market based economies.

Absolute capitalism frowns on such services.

I don't even know what absolute capitalism means. Capitalism is merely the private ownership of property. The countries with the best public services generate that money from private enterprises and not through state management of the economy.

When the legal system and the political establishment are geared to the benefit of big corporations reaping all the benefits of capitalism, while the rest of us are allowed to be exploited at the hands of said big corporations, and gain none of the benefits.

I would call that corruption, it happens in every economic system less so in capitalism though.

That's been the history of industrialized societies when the forces that be have cracked down on workers rights and labor laws. We saw that prior to the rise of organized labor, and we saw it again with Reagan when he cracked down on working families for the benefit of corporate America, the legacy which we are still living with today.

And most of us didn't have rights prior to industrialisation. The aristocracy to this day still have a huge amount of influence in the UK but if we never had the industrial revolution they would still be flat out running the place.

A new class of aristocracy - one of corporate wealth and financial power - arose due to industrialization. And this new class would have been more than happy to keep everyone else under foot were it not for organized labor and social justice groups fighting them.

The majority of Aristocrats did actually make money from the industrial revolution since they were the ones who had capital to invest. But during the industrial revolution this is the first time any rich people actually cared about the poor here in Britain the most notable examples I can think of are William Leverhulme, Joseph Rowntree and the Cadbury family. Whilst we may live under corrupt governments now we are not slaves and we were prior to capitalism.

If you say so about Britain. Here in America, industrialists saw paying their workers as a necessary evil, and so saw to it that wages were as low as possible. They didn't give a crap about their workers, and only payed higher wages with benefits, and allowed for organized labor because the government forced them to for the benefit of said workers.

Yeah there are bad people in every system and most of them were bad in Britain. Within the capitalism system people can protests businesses, boycott them, unionise, get the government to pass regulations etc. Within a socialist/communist system the bad people in government can stop you protesting, they can arrest you criticising them, kill you maybe even your family. No system is perfect or maybe even no system is good but capitalism allows power to be somewhat distributed and people can still vote with their feet.

A country can be democratic and socialist as well, while countries practicing free enterprise have been totalitarian.
You can vote with your feet, but too often that might mean you get to starve, especially if you were black listed. Better that people unionize and get what they want.

But a country where all the power is vested in government can easily cease being democratic.

A country where corporations are so powerful as to control government also can be freedom destroying.