Well have you seen the news about how happy the people are with the progressive changes in Venezuela in the last few days??? I don't thing are so rosey and the chinks in the plan are beginning to show.

Cavemen who had more than one woman never survived. God smite them for their sins. (Today we have drugs so that god cannot smite us. We have made it safe to sin.)

The reason capitalism has been desirable is that it gives the people the freedom to do what they want, i.e. set their own goals and agendas, more than any other system.

I'm confident you'll never get 300million people to agree on anything... someone will say the sky is not blue(yes, I know). So you need a system that lets people do what they want or they won't buy into it voluntarily.

That was the beauty of the US Constitution which said, have a good time, be careful not to hurt anybody and don't be out too late... one positive, one caution, one negative.... balanced.

That's better than, keep your skirt down, pants up and come home from school in a group..... all negatives.

Have you been putting salt peter in my food again?

Of course not everyone like the new system in Venezuela but these past events had nothing to do with free speech, just against the government.

MCTV committed treason and that is why Hugo declined to renew their contract. During the 2002 attempted takeover MCTV told Venezuelans to "go out and fight" and lied about Chavez stepping down. That is treason and a TV station in America would never get a renewed contract if they did that against Bush or any other president.

It is suppose to do that and will do that for a while but once it starts building up steam it starts causing all the problems. Monopolies and imperialism are not the freedom that everyone wants, but only to the ones in power.

Monopolies are, well, uncapitalistic. They trammel a free market and are thus undesirable.

Pierce's whole line of argument in this thread shows an enthusiasm for socialism. I, of course, do not share it -- and it won't last in any case:

I think the one attributed to Churchill runs "If a man isn't a socialist at twenty he has no heart; if he's still a socialist at forty he has no brain."

I guess I may congratulate myself on having always been brainy. As for Pierce, I wish him speedy recovery from his socialist disease.

I'm indebted to Heinlein for that phrase.

Does tw know the past tense of smite is smote, or was this a particularly infelicitous typo? With tw's inability to copyedit, we may never know.

I must have no heart... I was never a socialist, I saw that it was ignorant from day one. No two people have the same work ethic and, therefore, deserve the same pay/reward. I guess it was because at twenty I was a foreman.
He does not believe in freedom or equality, you are talking to a wall.

What’s your definition of capitalism then UG? You can make the most profit from a monopoly. Just because monopolies form because of capitalism, you can't just change the definition because you don't like it. You have to take the bad with the good.

I do not claim to be socialist because there hasn’t been a form that I think that will be overly successful. Socialism is something that has to be perfected and we are far from that right now so we will not see the desired affects right away.

I think socialism is a very good idea for Venezuela and the rest of South and Central America right now and it seems to be working. Profits are up and then only thing they have to worry about is inflation and ridding there self of an oil dependency, which they also seem to be working on with the help of some capitalism I will admit.

You are taking a completely ridiculous statement out of its thread. Class if I've ever seen it.

It's called old age. Welcome to the club.

Everyone serves someone in any organization. Call it what you want, dress it up as you like. Someone is going to be in charge and making the rules. I prefer our current system. I can use some improvements, certainly, but it beats all the others out there hands down.

BTW, I bet any TV station in the US could pretty much say anything they wanted against Bush and their ratings would more likely than not go up. The US Government has never, to limited understanding, shut down a previous licensed TV or Radio Station. They have been fined, but not shut down because of something they broadcast. Hell, think of War of the Worlds, they didn't even shut them down after all the chaos they caused.

Shut Down, hell they are lucky they weren't all shot and the station blown up, at the time.

Instead they have wacko extremists manipulate stations for them. Ted Koppel simply devoted one Nightline to honor all American dead from "Mission Accomplished". Wacko extremists such as Sinclair Broadcasting would not air that episode and joined a campaign for force ABC to limit programming that extremists did not like. Eventually rules even included as least two conservatives for each liberal guest.

ABC was plummeted with mail condemning a new TV show because its first episode was so disliked (All in the Family? no). Problem was: that show had not even aired. Extremists began attacking it only because they were told to. The show: Three's Company. Clearly it was evil only because wacko extremists feared we all might sin.

The Smothers Brothers simply told a truth about Vietnam. That show eventually aired in limited markets. Nothing extremist in it. It simply made an accurate point about government lies and Nam. But again, wackos got ignorant and extremists supporters to impose their morality on all others. Same wackos advocated deaths of millions of Vietnamese and called that 'patriotic American'. Same mentalities want same in Iraq.

Government need not impose its will when it has wacko extremists to do so - encouraged by government mouthpieces such as Rush Limbaugh.

Even overthrow the government?

That, my friend, is repeating the spin of the Chavez government. You really believe them?

You are right. MoveOn.Org has a huge following of leftists in the US and TV and Radio loves to spew their crap.:rolleyes: