[The Madcap]

Originally posted on 06/10/2011:

Capitalism, in the sense of a completely free market, does not work and will never work until we elimate greed which will never happen.

You're right that we will never eliminate greed. But it's wrong to think the answer is regulation. You simply have to realize in what instances that greed can be shaped for the best possible outcome. Making greedy people desperate is the LAST damn thing you want to do. And that's what regulation does.

Look at it this way, you're having a party, the people are hungry, so you order some pizzas. You have 20 guests, and you order five pizzas. That's 40 slices of pizza. Enough for each person to have two, and probably more, because the girls watching their weight won't have any. Except there's some sort of mistake, and the pizza guy only shows up with 3 pizzas. But there are some big boys at the party who aren't getting full on 1.2 slices of pizza. So the 3-4 hungriest people rush the kitchen as soon as the pizza gets there, and scarf down 2-3 slices as fast they can. And while they are it it, the next 3-4 hungriest people have gobbled down 1-2 slices themselves, and now there's no more pizza left and some of the guests got none because they aren't greedy hogs and were polite and willing to wait their turn instead of being part of the stampede.

And all this could have been remedied if the guy who ordered the pizza hadn't told the delivery driver, "hey, why don't you take two of our five pizzas and deliver them to the soup kitchen, I'll tip you extra."

Taxation and government regulations have made it so that we no longer have enough pizza to go around. And so the hungriest (greediest) are more and more motivated to flout common decency and do piggish things, like bum rush the counter with the pizza and stand there and hog it all. On Wall St. this happens when these guys cook up these crazy ass schemes to make money after the government has come in and basically raided the market for their own fukking gain.

You're right, you will never eliminate greed, but what you can do is foster an environment where those who would be greedy feel less of a need to be. And if the pizza boy had shown up with five pizzas, the fat pigs could have done the math to realize they didn't need to inhale as much as they could in two minutes. And that's the way it works on Wall St.

When there are more people in this country with money to invest, the Wall St. whores don't have to concoct all this crazy bullshit just to make money. But the American people don't have money to invest, because their money is being taken by the government through taxation. A good middle class income should not cost you $40,000 a year in taxes. But it does. And it is those thousands of thousands of thousands of dollars every year that could be used in the market place instead going to the government that unleashes the greedy frenzy that fuks shit up.

If the government can't operate on 10-15% of our incomes, (shit, I'd even take 20%) then it ain't doing it's fukking job.

You start putting $$$ back in the pockets of the middle class by cutting their taxes in half, and what you will find is a nation with lower prices, more jobs, and less bitching.