(03-28-2023, 11:24 AM)Lucky2Last Wrote:

(03-28-2023, 08:06 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: At the very root of our widespread prosperity, the driving force that gives us all the neat stuff we have, from cell phones to pro football franchises, is the desire for money and power.  So sometimes rich people have it better than poor people.  That's why people want to get rich.  And people wanting to get rich is why we have the level of prosperity that we have.   

You can't get money out of politics, anyway.  We have free speech.  Any rich person can buy a newspaper or TV station and say whatever they want.  Unless you want to repeal the First Amendment.

Let's never change, then. This system is broken and getting worse. Sure, at one point, before the elites completely captured our government, this system was prosperous, now it's smoke and mirrors. You want to ride this train to the last stop, even though it's starting to come off the rails. Ayn Rand's "greed is good" only works in any system until the greedy figure out how to exploit it. We hit that point in the 80's, and it's been a slow march towards the death of capitalism ever since. 

EVEN WORSE, you bury your head in the sand as the capitalists TELL YOU they are changing capitalism. They tell you they are buying governments. They tell you they are using them to shape the society how they want. And they are telling you it's going to benefit you. What's the result? We're losing our rights and our prosperity to stakeholder "capitalism." Who are the stakeholders? Why is that even a thing?

First of all, there has never been a time when the people you describe as "elites" did not have an outsized amount of influence in our government.  That's just the way the world works.  

Secondly, I don't understand your statement about stakeholder capitalism.  I know what stakeholder capitalism is, but I don't understand why you see it as anything significant.

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