Capitalism, left unrestrained and unfettered, is a horrible nightmarish system in which wealth and prosperity bottlenecks towards a smaller and smaller group of society. Given all the regulations and rules in the world, capitalism always seems to find a way to break and bend those rules in order to end up back at the monopolistic, fascistic place it started.

Capitalism is horrible for the planet and for the general happiness of the people. Capitalism is nothing more than the philosophy of greed. We all want. Humans want things.

Humans want to live well. The answer is not to force everyone to share everything equally because this will never work with human nature. The answer is to curb and balance human shortcomings with rules and regulations that do not work, as in America, specifically, for the benefit of the rich. The idea of trickle down economics is nothing short of insanity.

The only thing that will trickle down is the piss from the plumbing of the mansions on the hills atop the shanty towns below. This economic system of lords and tenents and slaves has been tried before and it won't work well for the well off either. No one will be safe in a world where only one out of ten thousand has a pot to piss in.

That is, unless those with the pots make sure the others are dumb and docile sheepish slaves for their benefit- which is exactly where we've landed. This is where most well-meaning libertarians end up dead wrong. Libertarian social principles, while wonderfully beneficial to the individual, do not make up for the problem of libertarian economic principles that leave most of society as veritable economic slaves.

Libertarian socialism is the best possible balance between human greed and human need.

Thoughts from earlier, which are much more favorable to capitalism:

Capitalism is the economic system that gives monetary incentives to workers and entreprenuers. I believe that a heavily regulated capitalist economy combined with a policy of reasonable (not prohibitive to the accumulation of capital) redistribution of wealth is the best system I can think of, though I have yet to be satisfied with this scheme.

I should note that there is no need, in any way, shape, or form, for money. We must breath air and eat food while maintaining homeostasis within certain temperatures. We do not absolutely need, but should have, for a quality human existence, interaction with and love of and from other humans. Money is just an illusion that has been ingrained in our philosophies, religions, and centers of power. The idea that we must have money is primarily beneficial to those who profit off our labor.

Likewise, I do not see money as inherently problematic. Systems with or without currency do not make them, by either nature, inherently good or bad, better or worse. It is more the way in which wealth is kept, divided, and distributed that makes for a healthy human society or culture. If there was no money but only one person got all the food, this would certainly be no better than a society with lots of money where it was given to those who needed it before it could be amassed in private treasuries.

This redistribution of wealth should be done in a way that provides for the basic necessities of life of those who benefit from such redistribution, but in which the redistribution is balanced also to still maintain a strong incentive structure towards work. The idea that someone who refuses to work should be forced to die of starvation is at the heart of one's charitable or harsh outlook on the value of human life.

While I think no one should be left, for any reason, without adequate food, water, shelter, healthcare, and educational opportunity, many that have resources would rather others suffer and perish than be made to give a share of it to them.

I am not a communist because I don't believe it is fair to have some people decide what is fair while others must obey such subjective decisions and, I think human psychology tends towards self-interest. This self-interest in a capitalist, competitive, harsh society will tend towards being greed whereas in more enlightenend environments, this self-interest will tend towards altruism as the self, in more just cultures, is seen as integrally connected to and dependent upon others.

"If those around me suffer, then I suffer" is the philosophy of empathy and peace. "If those around me suffer then who cares as long as I got mine" is the philosophy of capitalism. And, "If those around me suffer then I can probably manage tp take their wealth, resources, and land by enslaving them (more wealth for me) or eliminating them all together" is the philosophy of nihilistic empire.

Basically, truely democratic socialism, or, a more just version of what we have now in America with the addition of (i) universal healthcare, (ii) universal housing, and (iii) universal food distribution just like every other first world country on the planet. I do not mean that we should reward stagnation in people, apathy, or stagnation, but we should make sure they do not starve or die of exposure or injury or disease.

Why? Because if they suffer, we will all suffer. If they are mentally ill without help, hungry, stressed to the point of exhaustion, hopeless, or without reason to value their lives, then what makes anyone think they will be safe among them? Northern Mexico and many of the inner cities and rural ghettos in the United States are precisely these kinds of dark, unsafe places where people have become predatory because their societies have, at base, preyed on them or their people, class, ethnicity, or religion.

What would these additional social programs cost? They would cost about what a reasonable tax rate on the wealthy and on wealthy corporations would provide. Warren Buffett (Rolling Stone's #1 Enemy of the Earth) has said that he pays less in taxes than his secretary. Is this fair? Is this just? Does he need that money that others do, in fact, need? Does the cancer patient without health insurance, need medical attention? Or, does no one need to have their bodies? Do children of the poor not need their parents?

Do only the wealthy truly need to be taught to read and write? Perhaps if people like Buffett were paying his share, we would not have such a huge deficit or disparity in the quality of living. We would have less violence as violence is usually a result of desperation or poverty. Often, violent people are violent because of the desperate or violent environment in which they developed. The stresses of trying to feed, clothe, or shelter one's family while working for unlivable wages can result in brain damage, physical abuse, mental abuse, or addictions to anything from money, to sex or drugs.

Also, perhaps, if hugely profitable companies like Wal-Mart paid their employees a decent wage, then people who worked there would not need government subsidies in the huge numbers that they do. Perhaps a retail workers' union for all such employees would be helpful. Not to make these companies unprofitable, but to bring them to a level of worker compensation that was on par with what we had in America in the 1950s.

Basically, Wal-Mart and other similar waged companies, pay workers a low wage and give them low hours so that they need to get help from the government if there is no second job available or, in many cases, even if earners do work multiple minimum-wage jobs. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart reaps huge profits, all the while, costing taxpayers huge sums of wealth to keep its employees in livable conditions.

This is corporate socialism, which has another, uglier name: Fascism. Fascist systems usually result in great suffering, often of those at the very top, who are removed when those great number of people at the bottom no longer care about the potential threats to their well-being and decide to revolt. The French Revolution and the Bolshevic Revolution and the Cuban Revolutions all were caused by economic injustices and ultimately were self-defeating or life-ending for the "haves". It is, then, in the very best interests of the wealthy, to spread it enough to keep their fellow people happy enough so as to see their lives as worth living.

And, for anyone who thinks cheap crap is actually cheaper than more expensive versions of things like, for example, a hand-held can-opener, if you have to buy a new $3.00 can-opener every year, is it really cheaper than the $10.00 can-opener from Target, the $15.00 can-opener from Costco or the $20.00 can-opener from Kohls?

After just 10 years, the replaced cheap can-opener has created waste and has cost $30.00 if it breaks each year. Yes, the incandescent bulb is a fifth the price of the flourescent equivalent, but is the five times less energy usage and five times greater life span not ten times cheaper in the long run? Many people are addicted to the five minute high of crack cocaine in the United States, and, likewise many are addiction to the illusion of lower prices in many instances. Cheap things break or are inefficient more often than not. Cheap things are usually, though not always, cheap crap.

Again, cheap things are not always cheaper. Shopping at bargain-basement prices is like a drug addiction, you may immediately get what you want, but, eventually, you realize you wasted your money for a temporary high. And, as for the ubiquitous glued sawdust furniture, I would recommend simply going to Home Depot or Lowes and building your own from real wood if and where possible.

If you spend $100.00 on a desk that falls apart after five years, what's the point of not spending $250.00 on a real one or making one yourself, for less than the cost of the fake wooden one, that will last perhaps, a few hundred years or more?

If you really think about it, your average McDonald's employee is much more useful and productive than your average mega-bank CEO, so why should the CEO make so much more and be so much more useless? It is because cronies give money to cronies. In other words, rich give money to lawmakers, who give money to rich and so on, ad infinitum. Because the poor can't give the government officials anything, they get nothing.

I would suggest we take the advice of the Huffington Post (although the HP is heavily censored and, more and more, is a faux-progressive propaganda outlet that ignores myriad progressive issues- for example, one is not allowed to mention 9-11 demolition experts and engineers or risk being permanently barred from commenting- as in my case) and do everything we can do take our money out of the megabanks and put it into local ones.

We should deflate their capital and do what the government will not. If the government won't control the banks from the top down, we should exert influence from the bottom up. This is how, peacefully, we should approach all of our problems because economic pain is really the only thing that matters to the artistocracy.

This is not communism that I am advancing but basically a European-style system where the workers have realized a balance between the extremes of free-market capitalism and communism. This is almost what America looked like in the late 1940s and the 1950s when unions were strong and people made decent wages, had job security, and when bank regulations were stringent enough to maintain financial sensibility in terms of the practices of the financial sector in terms of risk-taking behaviour.

I am not saying everyone gets things for free other than basic necessities for life. In terms of housing, I mean people should have available bunk space in dormitory style and decent permanent shelters if there is a need for such things. They have these amazing hotel rooms in Japan that are the size of a large coffin and these would at least keep people warm and dry. Building them would create jobs.

Just one $500,000,000.00 bonus that some banker gets this year could pay for decent shelters across the country for all the people that are now homeless as a result of the financial collapse that he or she instigated. I mean that people are given enough food from government food distribution centers in case it is needed. And, I mean that we treat all humans as worthy of medical care. I am not saying we give away free houses, but free housing if people are in need of shelter. I am not saying that we give away free food but that we provide help with food when people need it. Education and job training for those who are able to receive such things is critical as well as incentives to work and not be on the system. The system should exist for those who need it because they are disabled or for those who need it, for some amount of time, while work is unavailable for some reason. In America today, work is unavailable for many who want it.

"YG$", 2003, by Anthony Peter Iannini

I have met people who intentionally go to jail because they have nowhere else to stay warm and fed.

Many people want to work more hours or some hours at all but it is not there. All I have said here is that we do not let these people slip through the cracks of our existing system. If people have some place else to live, then perhaps people should live with each other. But, there are a lot of people who have no where to go because there is no one left in their families or amongst their friends.

In America, the regulation and the redistribution of wealth are severely lacking. Banks and the financial sector of the American economy as a whole are based on a rape and pillage form of corporate conduct where those at the top make exorbitant profits while the lowest level employees struggle or are underemployed and must work more than one job. Before anyone should be allowed to amass billions of dollars in wealth, the basic necessities of shelter, food, and clothing for all citizens of a nation and of the world should be met through a reasonable and fair system of taxation.

Despite what many in America seem to believe in 2009, socialism and capitalism are perfectly compatible. And, socialism is not necessarily communism but only implies that some facet of a government is for the greater good. America is a socialist, capitalist country but not as socialist as a country like Sweden.

Socialism, in my opinion, generally implies that the people have implemented some form of government for the greater good of the people and at the taxpayer's expense. Public schools are socialist, as are police, firemen, emt workers, the army, etc.

Capitalism can be seen on a scale that ranges from anarcho-capitalism to defeated capitalism. In anarcho-capitalism, corporations have all the power and workers are basically slaves. In what I call defeated capitalism, the workers have taken so much of the profits that companys become insolvent and fail. America is much closer to anarcho-capitalism and to fascism than to a reasonable application of the principle of incentive as a force for motivation to produce labor.