Dear MAGA: 20190511 Open Topic

I’m about as pro-capitalist as one can get but there are legitimate conversations that could be had about Capitalism’s weaknesses. Capitalism is by far the greatest economic system ever created and I wouldn’t trade it for any other…but no economic system is perfect. As you stated above in the conversation with Sadie, Capitalism can also be twisted and changed (mostly by our own government’s regulations) over time and most of the time we barely notice what has actually changed.
So, Capitalism that is abused by government is not really the Capitalism we all know and love. This is true. But, it’s not just government that has it’s claws dug in. What some people call “progress” (I’ll just refer to it as “change”) also plays a huge role.
There are much deeper conversations that could be explored about the Industrial Revolution, Post Industrial Age, and now the Information/Technological Age, and looking forward to the Artificial Intelligence Age…and how all of these have effected and changed what capitalism is, was, and will be.
People used to craft “things” and the products they created were little pieces of art that lasted a lifetime. Now, just about everything is plastic and disposable. Human beings are becoming increasingly replaceable. Do we really need forty different types of mouthwash? “Stuff” is more accessible than ever before and in many ways this is a good thing…but in other ways it has been devastating. The Mom and Pop shops almost disappeared forever and are still hanging on by a thread.
I don’t think this can be entirely blamed on consumers being irresponsible, although that has played a part. Economic systems have so many moving cogs and wheels that it is almost inevitable that it gets twisted out of shape in a world that now changes so rapidly and so drastically. And socialist/globalist politicians and fake economists (I’m looking at you Paul Krugman) and the puppet media have certainly done us no favors.
President Trump has been the one bright light in many decades, more than decades, actually. Lower taxes, less regulation, business friendly, job and wage growth, better trade deals…etc. (hat-tip to Fleps Daily News Roundups). But even with these common sense (to us) policies, Capitalism will have to continue to adapt to all of the changes that an ever-changing world continues to throw at us.
Technology is a beast and it’s going to continue to have massive positive and negative effects on how our economy functions. And I have to keep in the back of my mind that President Trump can unfortunately only serve two terms.

Wheatie, capitalism per se is not to “blame” – people are.
Capitalism is an idea, dreamt up / developed by people for people. We got the idea by mimicking nature.
Competition is a natural law of living systems. Survival of the fittest through natural selection. Capitalism is based on this law of nature – that is THE reason it outperforms communism. “Consumers” select the best, the capital flows to that, those that can’t compete, die. Someone else develops something better, and Voila, Kodak goes extinct. A human economy follows NATURAL laws – everything does, by definition.
Enter advertising – to “inform” the consumer of the next big thing. Before you know it, we consumers are are camped out for days to get “it” asap. We are LOST. We do not know why we do this schiff. But most of us are on the materialist treadmill, enslaved to our desires and wants. We are fallen creatures that ought to know better by now. But survival of the fittest means that it is an arms race to survive. The advertisers are getting better, so they can “survive”. The “widget”makers are making sparklier widgets, etc.
This is us these days, sadly.
The only way to change is to change ourselves – this is what the battle of ideas is about. What are we going to get out of bed for tomorrow, if it is not to work for the next shiny object. America promoted this life style – can it change itself?
THIS is what we should be talking about, as soon as your republic is protected – till the next election. Time is of the essence.
If MAGA is just about the consumer economy and the pursuit of happiness, we will end up back on the cliff edge in the blink of an eye. We are suffering a crisis of MEANING.
Freedom is vital – but only if it serves us, so that we are free to THINK about what this is all about, then live that ideal out. Capitalism is brilliant, because it is so efficient that it provides for our essential needs. We need to capitalise on that freed up TIME. So the consumer needs to be buried, and the citizen resurrected. Let the economy serve the citizen.
The citizen then decides what country he/she wants, and works to attain it.