Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.

Has Modern Capitalism mutated into totalitarianism?

Capitalism is promoted on the premise that competing self-interests, regulated by the realities of "the market", work for the general benefit of human society. However, if the modern pillars of Capitalism - the banks, the stock markets, global corporations - are so powerful that political institutions will take "any action necessary" to prevent these pillars from falling, then the market cannot perform its essential function. Such a dysfunctional market means we do not have capitalism, but possibly something akin to an oligopoly - a very unhealthy and dangerous state of affairs where immense power is concentrated in a relatively small, but completely unaccountable group interested only in perpetuating and extending its own power. Not unlike the totalitarian Eastern European states of recent history.

What is to be done?

Update:

Nick Z makes a valid point about the West's freedom to organise for change. However, if we attempted to do that how would the threaten oligarchy react? With suppression and (ultimately) violence, I suspect, if their interests were seriously threatened. In other words, we only have that "freedom" so long as we choose not to exercise it. Or as Stalin would have it - "A citizen can do anything he or she wants - so long as it does not conflict with the will of the state."

5 Answers

Relevance
  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    Perhaps you are right that the present economic system has been mismanaged to the detriment of the majority and to the benefit of a small minority. Even now many investment bankers are getting paid huge bonuses probably at taxpayer expense, despite all the losses and misery they've caused.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&si...

    But unlike in truly totalitarian countries, people are free to organize political movements and change the government and the rules through the electoral process.

    Perhaps this is what needs to be done. It's not easy to persuade the majority of people to change the system. But it is certainly possible and probably even likely to happen if the economy gets bad enough for most people.

  • 1 decade ago

    The market nowadays is to complex and if there wasn't intervantion of the government we would surely have passed by at least two other depressions after the great depression 1n 1930. The only thing we have pto be careful is so the government those have too much control over business. A little of control is actually good because when people are making lots of money, they have the ability to increase the prices, but when we are facing hard times they can also decrease the price of goods.

  • 1 decade ago

    Seems like the market, which is supposed to support democracy, has instead taken over democracy by seizing the money and institutions.

    We have to convince people in the market that it is in their best interests to to spread the wealth around and keep the game fair. There cannot be megalithic icons of greed that create such disproportion.

    If that fails, we should start giving away valuable, self-sustaining technology to the public, or create areas that are completely self-sufficient. This would make the corporations obsolete.

  • ?
    Lv 4
    4 years ago

    If those institutions had failed with none government intrusion into the marketplace or government rules or companies that distorted the hazards, then possibly it must be seen that way. yet that's no longer the case. in actuality that government rules that forced institutions to take unfavourable aspects they commonly does no longer, and then use government institutions and rules to objective to mitigate that possibility, in basic terms led to the creation of a extensive vulnerable shape that became into absolute to fall. possibly if government particularly did no longer intervene interior the marketplace, imposing upon economic institutions to alter into gadgets of the politicians' social rules, we does no longer have had this variety of mess. The marketplace wasn't allowed to freely carry out its mandatory function. this is the intrusion of government into the marketplace that creates problems.

  • How do you think about the answers? You can sign in to vote the answer.
  • SDD
    Lv 7
    1 decade ago

    Failing businesses are supposed to fail. Preventing their failure simply incents the wrong sorts of behavior and prolongs the inevitable market adjustments (ask the Japanese government).

Still have questions? Get your answers by asking now.