This review was originally published on Feb. 3, 2010 on Lunch.com.
Is it Sportsor is it simply a mechanic of capitalism?
Tennis, Football, Basketball, Golf… they are all multi-billion dollar businesses and a lot is at stake for the players and audiences alike. Games could be rigged. Coaches could be replaced depending on how the games were being played.
Rigging aside, there is also the question of underground gambling and betting. It seems they do go hand in hand. To deny all these are existing in the background is to deny the existence and influences of capitalism. Authorities may institutionalize the gaming of sport games. That in essence is the most obvious case of capitalism functioning at its grassroots level.
We are too far into the world of capitalism to deny its existence & its vices. The world can simply be easily classified into a "no money no talk' kind of societies. It is so deep rooted now that it even penetrates families and the institutions of education, hospitals and leisure (or should I say, especially so?).
Milton Friedman on Capitalism
Education Well, how many families need to be financially sound to send their children to a private school and then tutoring from the early stage of life? Can you get a good education in the later stage of life if you didn't go to a good one to lay down the foundation? I very much doubt it as with many parents as well. So, what did they do? Charity works simply so that their children could get into a specific or choice of school (or even day care for that matter!)? Voluntary work too, am I not right? It is more rampant in the developed cities than the developing ones, I do believe. Think Harvard, do you think anyone could simply go to Harvard? I very much doubt it. Same for Cambridge, Yale or MIT.
Dalai Lama on Capitalism & Education
Health Care Hospitals need funding and the best hospitals in L.A., New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong or Singapore are among the most pragmatic in the world. They do not even allow you to enter the hospitals if you do not have a medical insurance policy in place or a fat bank account. Talk about the medical field's intention of saving human lives. I'm not being cynical, just pragmatic. Look at health care in California State; plenty of people with cancer are dying at home simply they don't have the funds needed to even get the medication to alleviate pains, let alone treatment and chemotherapy or surgery!
Bill Gates on Capitalism
Ronald Reagan & Barack Obama on Capitalism
Like it or not, Capitalism is here to stay. How we choose to deal with it is up for discussion, I'd say. And how the world choose to balance the power of money & greed is up to the world's largest economies & governments. I do believe we're seeing a change. Good or bad? I'm not so sure. What work before may no longer work in the future. Globalization has brought about such a big gap in the have and the have not that the world is destabilized, imho. We are up for a major change in how we conduct our lives and businesses.
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woopak_the_thrillJuly 09, 2011
funny that you wrote this since I was reading an article on capitalism's pros and cons the other evening. the vids are not showing on my end...
SharrieJuly 09, 2011
Really? I've no clue why. They work fine over here... May be you can refresh again? Or, perhaps YouTube runs out of funding, hehe...
Capitalism has some downsides which could be ameliorated to some degree with a progressive tax code, taxation of excess consumption and volunteer programs like the Peace Corps and Americare. Many schools are now requiring graduates to do enforced community service as a condition precedent for graduation. We have to go into the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) and define derivatives as to the rights, duties, obligations and recourse of the parties- just like we set forth rules for checks and drafts in the UCC. In addition, we should subject derivatives to meaningful margin requirements. It wouldn't be a bad thing to revisit the Glass Steagall Act to correct some of the excesses of 2008. http://www.investopedia.com/articles/03/071603.asp#axzz1RQmOYSpr
I'm a traveler at heart & have been nicknamed Travel Queen by friends & colleagues alike. Traveling has been my life passion for the last decade or so. As we enter a new decade, I'm excited … more
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There is no consensus on the definition of capitalism, nor how it should be used as an analytical category.[1] There are a variety of historical cases over which it is applied, varying in time, geography, politics and culture.[2]Economists, political economists and historians have taken different perspectives on the analysis of capitalism. Scholars in the social sciences, including historians, economic sociologists, economists, anthropologists and philosophers have debated over how to define capitalism, however there is little controversy that private ownership of the means of production, creation of goods or services for profit in a market, and prices and wages are elements of capitalism.[3]
Economists usually put emphasis on the market mechanism, degree of government control over markets (laissez faire), and property rights[4][5], while most political economists emphasize private property, power relations, wage labor, and class.[6] There is a general agreement that capitalism encourages economic ...
