| jaw hits floor Which of those two philosophies do you think accepts "violence and coercion as a means to mold society to a specific version"? From the context, I'm guessing that you're referring to socialism, and thereby claiming that capitalism rejects violence and coercion- my apologies if I'm misunderstanding you. Assuming that I am interpreting your comment correctly, though, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you don't know much about the history of the twentieth-century US foreign policy, especially regarding Latin America. We have a long history of using violence and coercion, either directly or via proxies, in order to promote our capitalist philosophies. "Interestingly," we seem to choose to do so primarily in situations where we have significant financial interests... anyway, here's some reading you might find educational: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#History_in...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_U.S._regime_change_actio... Note that I'm most definitely not saying that socialism, as a philosophy, has cleaner hands than capitalism. Speaking in terms of political ideologies, the take-home lesson of the abattoir that was the 20th century is that putting one's faith in a political ideology of any kind is asking for trouble. |
Secondly, many people have different understandings of capitalism, and pop culture has continued to remove meaning from the word, which is probably why you are having a hard time understanding my comment.
The examples you cite are perfect examples of the opposite of capitalism: socialized institutions (or the government directly) using violence as a means to an end, either political or economic in nature.
For reference here is the jist from Wikipedia, which leaves a little to be desired but is still pretty decent:
"Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately owned and operated for profit; decisions regarding supply, demand, price, distribution, and investments are not made by the government; Profit is distributed to owners who invest in businesses, and wages are paid to workers employed by businesses."