End of the line for Holden

[Jethrow]

Geez tomcat, ranting loud and long about capitalism does not make you right, it just makes you seem like an ignorant commie. And you need a new category for your tag, the 1% of people who think they know, but actually DON'T.

Lets make one thing clear. The bailouts, and large sums of money being handed over to companies like GM is NOT capitalism. The response (to stop the handouts) recently offered by the Libs is. In a free market capitalist system, businesses need to sink or swim on their own, with the market deciding (by buying or not buying its goods) if it has merit.

The underlying statist intervention, by usually lefty governments, think ALP, think Obama, where they seek to distort the market mechanisms by providing subsidies is not free market thinking.

Unfortunately where we think of the USA or even Australia as being a capitalist system, the fact is it isn't. It tries, but it is constantly distorted by governments, whose centrist ideals are at complete odds with the free market system.

And the car industry is an excellent example of this. In Australia, we have heard about how the car industry has been given grants for years and years. But think about that. Where does that fit in with capitalism? It might seem a good idea, and perhaps as a one off quick fix it could have value. But to do it at all, it just distorts the economics.

It actually changes the dynamics of the car industry to become an industry that now relies on the subsidies, with the businesses chasing the easy money. But why wouldn't they? One thing that is a feature of the free market system is that it can react quickly to change. And here the change is free money, so it gets exploited. And this is even better, for in this case, some of the exploitation was done by the union, thinking, hey, if there is free money, we will have some too.

So what started out as the government thinking it was a good idea, turned out it actually wasn't. And I agree that governments of all sides can do this. Governments need to understand that the best way to manage a capital system is to not try and control it, to not intervene in it.

Sure they can tax it, skim some off the top, etc etc, but they would do better to not get in the way. Lets face it, and I said this before. Governments do not create wealth. Never have, never will. Not in their DNA. It is enterprising people, people with some drive and go, cobra people, who create wealth, and there is no better way to do it than in a capitalist society.

Hell, history has shown this to be true over and over and over. Nothing else comes close. And the fact is, what we have here, despite the government meddling still does a pretty good job.

Good enough I am sure tomcat, to allow your business to do well for you and your employees.

If you look under virtually all financial crisis's of the sort we are hearing a bit too frequently about, of the sort we blame capitalism for, dig deeper, and you will see where government intervention has forced some market distortion somewhere along the way. And the problem with this is, is it usually leads to a market failure.

PS

I am also not a member of any political party. I have owned my own business and worked for others. I am pro a free market economy. I try not to let belief distort facts.