[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by jfman

You can natter on all you please about human nature, it doesn’t justify the excesses of failed capitalism any more that it justifies robbery, fraud or other petty crime for the purposes of acquiring goods.

Dipping the pension pot to prop up a failing business, while paying yourself dividends, and leaving the taxpayer to pick up the tab is “human nature”.

You are also, as ever, viewing everything though a simplistic understanding that there is only capitalism or communism and not a grey area in between with (regulated) markets where they work and state funded provision in areas of market failure. I’m sorry you appear unable to understand the complexities of this, possibly because your adversarial political ideology doesn’t allow it, however I’m sure others can understand perfectly well.

The grey area in between is what generally happens.
All of the social services and charities fit into the grey area category encapsulated within a capitalist system that generates the wealth to fund them. And I'm sure you know this.

There are distasteful aspects of capitalism that you have regularly highlighted, such as dipping into pension funds, ripping out asset value and other predatory behaviours. However, these are exceptions not the rule.

You've said (it was you, wasn't it?) words to the effect that capitalism is one huge Ponzi scheme. If that were true, then your arguments could make progress. But it isn't so. You could single out certain businesses, perhaps Apple, Microsoft, Amazon (?) to offer three - where shares are distributed among employees, the founders obviously having an enormous stake. Is that a huge Ponzi scheme? Is the apex ending with a single person or group of persons?

Gradually, governments will regulate/tax excesses and then someone will devise a new wheeze to get round that. But basically, capitalism works and is the natural place for markets to be.