[PythonicAlpha]

Of course, they are consequences of today's corporate capitalism!

To have a shiny vision of capitalism, that just is not compatible with reality, does not help. Communism's failure was not, that it was not a nice idea, it's failure was, that it's thoughts where not compatible with reality!

Reality is, that international corporations have huge stacks of money and plenty of lawyers and lobbyists. And they use it for the only ethics they got: profits.

And TTP, inequality, centralization, unemployment ... are results of the thrive to more and more profits for the owning people at the expense of the working people.

Today's capitalism is shaped by the profit motive -- and the profit motive has no morals and no ethics.

And when you talk about "free market" -- there is no such thing. A real free market would give everybody the same chance. But the situation today is, that the big corporations are shaping the laws and the small players can not. So there is no such thing as a free market with free and equal competition in reality.

[TeMPOraL]

I guess we should try and move away from labels a little bit - because a lot of time is spent discussing whether communism is true communism, or if what we have is capitalism, corporationism, corporate state capitalism or whatever.

Name it however you like, it doesn't change that there are processes you mentioned that bring about the results we don't like. We need to focus on those.

> Today's capitalism is shaped by the profit motive -- and the profit motive has no morals and no ethics.

In a way, our economy is a paperclip maximizer. It doesn't love or hate you, but you're an expendable resource that can be used to make something else (profit within the system).

[PythonicAlpha]

I would agree. Labels and names are not helpful, because everybody has his own view of it. For some, capitalism is hell, for some it means the only rescue against the hell of communism and vice versa.

Your last sentence describes it very well. It is the mechanics, which are the driving force -- and the direction is predefined by the mechanics. The driving force we have today is profits ... and the result is a de-humanized and un-ethical society, because profits are not ethical at all.

[Demiurge]

This is very important to establish every time there is a discussion, in that there are politically convenient labels, and there are what we can consider terms that are useful to further the argument. The terms capital-ism and commun-ism refer to compatible aspects of reality. Like self interest and sharing for common good co-exist in reality. Trying to eliminate either would make us unhappy. USA economy has been favoring a less people consolidating more capital.

[timtas]

> the situation today is, that the big corporations are shaping the laws and the small players can not

Indeed! How about we fix that and don't let big corporations shape the laws? Crony capitalism is not an inherent feature of capitalism, it's a perversion of it which really ought not be taken as a given.

[TeMPOraL]

The only way to do that would be to have a government completely disconnected from the economy. As long as the officials need to eat, need to send their kids to school and need the money to increase their chances for reelection, politics is a part of market economy. Pretending those two are not connected is fooling oneself.

[timtas]

Wait...politics is part of the economy so we can pay politicians to be part of the economy? Seems tautological.

[TeMPOraL]

Because politics currently is a part of economy, period. You can't disconnect the two as long as officials participate in the economy themselves, because any such participation is a bridge between the two "worlds".