January 29, 2005

Capitalism and Governin Ideologies

Capitalism is an economic ideology. It is often mistakenly placed in the same category as governing ideologies that may contain complete economic ideologies, such as Marxist-Leninism or Fascism. It functions under almost all kinds of governments and governing ideologies, but works optimally with the following government and social characteristics:

  1. Strong legal and societal recognition of property rights (this is something too many environmentalists fail to understand)
  2. Personal freedom with the minimum level significantly less than seen in the US (e.g. Singapore or China)
  3. A transparent government that supports the concept of corporations and keeps crime at a low enough level
  4. A transparent legal system which delivers the best possible approximation of equality under the law in both criminal and civil law
  5. Low levels of governmental corruption (which is really a side effect of #'s 1-4. In general, the more regulation, the more corruption.
  6. Not overly high taxation of corporations or individuals - put another way, government spending needs not be too large a part of the economy
  7. A minimal regulatory environment - one that meets not overly ambitious social goals with overall system efficiency.
Posted by John Moore at 04:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 27, 2005

Suggestions for postings on MarcCooper.com

Several folks have complained that my posts are too long on Marc Coopers excellent blog.

I would appreciate suggestions as to how to achieve my goals, or whether to abandon some of them.

Marc's postings are relatively long and usually bring up several contentious topics.

My goal is to respond to the topics on which I think I have something to offer - typically disagreement.

I also want my position to be clear.I have been accused of stereotyping when I don't elaborate. Also, I am participating in a forum where the single words representing a concept often have different meaning to the majority of the audience than they would on a conservative blog. Hence they may need elaboration.

Also, I believe anecdotes provide clarity in the sense that examples do in pedagogy, and humor helps keep discussions from turning into flame fests like we had last night.

And yet, something is wrong with my posts.

So I welcome constructive comments.

For those who show up just to give ad hominem attacks. I reserve the right to delete the comments. I will do so by simply replacing the entire text with DELETED so that authors will know twhat happened.

Posted by John Moore at 12:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack