While liberalism of course worked out for select few, there is a reason why it is not rampant and unregulated. You need regulations and without them and government interference with business world, we would have child labour once more.
People need to remember that, when child labour was a thing, and government wanted to ban it, business owners went on big lobbying effort and bribed as many politicians as much money as possible to keep working children for cheap. That may sound awful to you now, but believe me, that would repeat again or similar stuff would repeat again if you do not put regulations.
You think minimum wage is for fun? If there were no minimum wage, the entire nations salary averages would be lower by now.
You're defending something already lost. Workers need protection from exploitation, yes, obviously, nobody serious argues against that. But your defense of that thing doesn't exist in the form that you believe it does anymore.
Child labor laws worked because they had a specific enemy. Factory owners. Specific people making specific decisions to exploit specific children. You could point at them. You would be able to organize against them. You could win.
Who do you point at now?
When your wages are flat but everything costs more, who was working you over? The government that printed out money? The corporations that increased prices? The other country that did restrict trade? All of them? None of them specifically?
The exploitation became institutionalized. Diffused. We continue to behave as government and corporations are separate entities opposed. Yet, they haven't been so for a long time. Trade policy is scribbled by corporate lobbyists. Regulations get caught in the net of industry they're supposed to be regulating. The revolving door between government and business is so smooth nowadays it's almost just one door.
When you say we need government to protect us from corporations. Which government?
The world needs a leader who will work for the freedom of the people instead of influencing them, who will work to protect their rights and help them live properly. Is there such a leader in the world now? No, I don't think there is any leader who has left his people free.
Governments have created country borders so that they can rule the country, control the price of goods, control taxes and, if necessary, loot the people's money. When the borders of countries are broken, it will not be easy for any leader to dominate the people.
What is really happening with weakening borders? I look at the internet. No borders there. And yet we have more concentrated power than we have ever had before. A few companies have control of what billions see, think and buy. They do not need borders. They need networks. So perhaps it is not borders per se that are the problem but what it is that we endeavor to control through borders. A border can be protective or it can be a prisoner-making wall. The same fence keeps danger out and keeps you in. Someone always has the key and that someone is never neutral.
The leader you describe, the leader who works for freedom, must be impossible. Because, as long as someone has power to protect your rights, they have power to take them too. This is the paradox. We want somebody strong enough to defend us but not strong enough to control us. History shows this balance almost never to hold.
It seems like corporatism is the unavoidable peak of capitalism and the effects of it are on show in America right now, everywhere you look it seems companies are consolidating for their own benefit, squeeze profits for the benefit of a few and abuse their position to the max. Regulated capitalism is the ideal scenario, but it relies on very intelligent politicians that can build rules that run a fine balance between protecting the public and rewarding business owners, while keeping all transactions as transparent as possible. Considering the grade of politicians that get in to power these days, using highly negative and destructive tactics, it seems that regulated capitalism is very hard to achieve - corporatism is always trying to degrade it after all, because it wants higher profits and lower pushback from laws. Globalization has actually brought huge benefits to the world, but it also creates dependencies that can be detrimental - for example the inability to stand up to countries that create a stranglehold on certain materials or products.
Regulated capitalism is the ideal but it requires the intelligence and integrity of the people doing the regulating. And as you said, the quality of those people is continuing to decline. But I wonder if there is something deeper going on that makes this something inevitable and not just unfortunate. The issue with corporatism is that it alters the structure of incentives for all operating within the system. If you are a politician, and corporations are funding your campaigns, your intelligence gets pointed in the wrong direction. You get very smart about justifying their interests rather than protecting the public. The system does not need stupid politicians. It needs captured ones. And capture is easier than we care to admit.
We spend too much time worrying about money and prices and economic systems. But, how much of our lives are we in control of?
In a world living under the capitalisme system, what do you expect? What do you expect the culture to be based on when money becomes the biggest interest of everybody everywhere in the planet? People commit crimes for few pennies and this is what reveals the true face of capitalism-imperialism. What we see in everyday life is the same we see between big powers who fight against each others just for the materialist interests.
If money is the greatest interest everywhere, then money is also the greatest power everywhere. Which means whichever people control the money control everything else. And right now, who controls the money? Governments and central banks. Capitalism-imperialism is in fact the antithesis of free markets. Real capitalism would mean I can trade with anyone anywhere without permission. But that is not what we have. We have governments deciding who can trade with who. We have sanctions and tariffs and currency controls. We have central banks creating money and setting interest rates.
I agree that is terrible, people who commit crimes for pennies. But is that due to too much capitalism or too little? Because in a truly free system, those pennies wouldn't lose value every year through inflation. In a truly free system, people could freely work across borders without government permission. In a truly free system there would be no monopoly on money itself.
"Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" by Caspar David Friedrich (1818)
Interesting choice. This painting asks a lot of questions... Somehow, I think it's more about inner questions, the question about inner life. And that can go in many ways... psychological & philosophical. Maybe I am completely wrong, I just got interested... Your topic and picture reminded me of a photo I saw a long time ago:
Indian viewing railroad from top of Palisades. 435 miles from Sacramento
But, how much of our lives are we in control of?
It's a tricky question... The answer depends on many factors. I guess many of us control very little of the world around us, but we can control ourselves... our actions & reactions.
It reminds me of the old idea that freedom is not a matter of changing circumstances but changing relationship to circumstances. The railroad comes whether we want it or not. But we choose how we stand through being watching it. Reaction is what happens to us. Action is what we choose. Most people experience living completely in the reaction mode now. The news occurs and they react. Prices change and they react. Governments make decisions and they make reactions. Exhausting since reaction never stops. There is always something new that requires an answer.
