I believe it was because we grew up in the 90s shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, but I was raised that capitalism is the shit. In recent years it's understandably taken a hit due to the financial crisis, but I've seen more and more comments of late that "capitalism is evil." Eh... not really? It's an economic system; it's not inherently good or evil. It just... is. Technically capitalism means production and industry are owned by private individuals, not the state. I stated before on xanga I think a good government has both a mixture of capitalism and socialism, and the rest is just arguing where the line is. For example, Amtrak is a piece of shit because no one in the government is funding that. If perhaps you got investors to put up some money for a high-speed rail, perhaps it'd do much butter. Or on the other side, the military doesn't really need to be owned by the state; we could just hire Blackwater (now called Xe) for all our needs; probably would save a lot of money we spend on a standing army.

I think very few people who throw out the line "capitalism is evil" really think about that statement deeply. Do we have problems today with job security, wages, and unemployment? Sure thing. But I don't necessarily that capitalism is the source of all the ills. Just because the state owns it doesn't mean they also can't hire people for barely anything and fire them at the drop of a hat. Places like charter schools go out of their way to staff non-union teachers so they can be more easily disposed of.

I guess there's also banking and the stock market which... okay, I'll admit it's pretty fucked up there. There's plenty of interest-rate rigging and whatnot, but we all have to admit our society would not function without a modern banking system. How would you get loans to open up that bodega at the corner? Borrow from families? Oh wait, private ownership is evil, so therefore you should just be an employee at a state-owned grocery depot. Okay, fine, how would you be able to transfer money for your online purchases without banks? Goddammit, those websites are private companies too, so we can't do that.

Our current system has problems, don't get me wrong, but throwing a blanket term that "capitalism is evil" or "I need this job because of capitalism" doesn't really make any sense. Socialism doesn't solve all your problems. You'd still need a job in a socialist economy. And you wouldn't necessarily get your dream job in a socialist economy. Or if you did, that it would be able to sustain yourself and a family. Regulation is probably the way to go for some of the excesses, but then you have to wonder how much is too regulation to the point that it's choking the economy (I'm looking at you, France). Considering the current distrust in the government I'm surprised that people are throwing around socialism as a solution; do you honestly trust congress to be handling major portions of our economy right now?