Paradigmshift6

We've Crossed the Line from Capitalism to Socialism

To say that we have crossed a line into socialism is a completely absurd. The bailout for AIG was an unfortunate, though necessary assist in order to delay the utter panic which would else have surely ensued. The problem with calling this a step toward socialism and the death of free trade depends on one's point of view. You could I suppose say that letting the government step in, the government which is actually us, we the people, is bad because we have to pay for someone's mistake. However isn't that just the market, who also happens to be we the people, fixing a few private companies whose pitfalls occurred out of the "free trade" ideals which have ran our economy over the past 28 years? Perhaps if companies were more tightly regulated so they could not be both entangled in the very fabric of the US economy as well as on the edge of destruction, then we wouldn't be in this mess. I would not call that socialism, I would call it fair trade. What a novel idea, a system in which companies can prosper even by following the rules, and where the government...remember folks, that's actually us, that's we the people, every single one of us, though I know it doesn't always feel that way, sets these rules so that every company has an equal shot at making a few bucks! Maybe then we wouldn't have to listen to articles that fear a socialist takeover of American values and capitalism. Maybe we wouldn't have to all pony up because one company is so important that its demise could spell the very end of our economy! In fact, that scenario actually sounds a lot like something else. It sounds like a monopoly. It sounds like the very thing that real free trade would NOT want to occur, when one private company controls more than their fair share and can manipulate or bankrupt us all. It is going to take a lot more than an AIG bailout to properly fix or should i say recreate an economy that can work, really work for everybody. Let's not kid ourselves with these short sighted, rally cries for capitalism and free trade. Look where it has gotten us so far.

Alt Energy and Trading Green

Like any idea in infancy, creating new green sources of energy and improving the ones that exist will take a certain amount of sacrifice. It is not only inevitable that new technology will be created, to either improve current ideas or discover new ones, it is necessary for the progression of humanity. No matter how much oil we find it will eventually run out and the sooner we cut ties with it the better. Think about it this way, if we invest our time and money now on energy sources that could one day have costs that are relatively insignificant, then we will have one less item on the income statement diminishing profits.