Funny you say that when capitalism has no morals beyond profit.
Just have a look on what Boeing it's doing.
Just have a look on what Boeing it's doing.
I'm talking about America, with a so-called democracy far older than the USSR. Regulations? New Deal? Wisdom over centuries? What's that? That doesn't make happy my shareholders, so forget that, right?
Said this, Boeing it's a disaster.
Technically America is not a democracy -- it's a federal republic composed of states with widely differing interpretations of democracy.
To me the USA is obviously a (or maybe the) federal democratic republic. There is no contradiction. Sovereignity resides in the people and there's no monarch so it's a republic and elected representatives hold most of the power so it's a (representative) democracy.
The primary system can choose candidates however they wish -- the Constitution does not specify the method [1]. A Democratic challenger to Biden this time was blatantly refused ballot access in many states. Backroom deals can cause good candidates to drop out and support worse candidates (see Buttigieg dropping out in 2020 and supporting Biden, and then Biden appoints him SecTrans). Kamala Harris was among the worst performers in the 2020 Democratic primary, but for some reason she was chosen (not elected, mind you, but chosen by Biden's team) as Biden's running mate, so now the Democrats have no good choices.
The Electoral College is winner-take-all in many places and the congressional districts are often gerrymandered to completely eliminate representation of the minority party. For example, Nashville had a Democrat representative, but after redistricting the city was split like a pizza among three mostly rural GOP districts to completely eliminate its member of Congress [2]. It is the capital of the state and largest city but has no member of Congress now.
I'm glad you have such a positive view of US democracy, but many of us living here are extremely worried about our trajectory.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_pri...
2. https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2022-11-04/na...
It’s just a retort that American conservatives like to say whenever American liberals mention how undemocratic/unfair the electoral college or the senate is. There’s no real historical substance to the phrase. It only became common to hear after the 2000 and 2016 elections where republicans won the presidency but received fewer total votes, the same scenario which almsot happened in 2020 and could very well happen in 2024.
Sovereignty residing in the people is not a feature of a republic. The only thing that defines a republic is that it isn't a monarchy.
If it's a republic and the government is elected by a democratic process, then it's a "democratic republic". And you don't need a republic to have a democratic state either: the UK and Japan are examples of this (both are monarchies).
https://csac.history.wisc.edu/document-collections/constitut...
Coming from a post US "Washminister* system (Australia) the US "Little King" looks very much a daft arrangement as exemplified by the inability to fire a POTUS for poor performance | losing support, etc.
We retained a symbolic monarch as a "nominal" head of State to bind the notion of a country over the transient seatings of Government but seeded very little in the way of real effective power to that monarch.
As a country we've swapped Prime Ministers (politically equivilant here to a US President) on a dime wothout skipping a beat in managing the country.
Think what you like about the effectiveness of the US system, but it's not a monarchy in any way, shape, or form. A monarchy requires power (or at least a position that's supposed to have power, as most modern monarchies are really just figureheads) to be inherited. Sure, once in a while US presidents get to that position partly because of family connections (FDR, GWB), but that's nothing like the way an actual monarchy operates.
Clearly these were crazy people far divorced from reality as we know it modern times:
During the ratification debates, Antifederalists charged that the President would become an elected monarch, that cabals would develop to ensure his reelection, and that the presidential veto power would be abused. They further feared that presidential power to grant pardons would allow the president to conspire with others in treasonable activities with impunity.
Although I agree this could happen in other economic system too, in a communist system it could be simply an order from above for example.
Liberalism does, to the extent the goal is human flourishing. Denigrating Capitalism for not being about morals makes as much sense as denigrating a tractor for not being about morals. Capitalism is merely what is employed as a tool (in part, as we used mixed-market economy) for the economic branch of our system.
> Every system in the world since the Neolithic used tokens to interchange goods.
They used a bartering system. Price signaling came later. Coinage was technically existent rather early but did not see widespread use.
Systems devoid of price-signaling a) don't scale, b) are irredeemably terrible.
I guess you agree that it ought to have nothing to do with morality because this appears to be a non-sequitur.
Go and look at their financial statements. Look at their stock over the past half decade.
It's all deep in the red. They're still alive because their past achievements are significant enough to carry them through this and they will probably still be salvaged.
Otherwise they'd be long bankrupt, freeing up immense human, physical, and financial capital to go do something else.
In other words, the system is built to allocate resources to companies based on performance - of course that doesn't mean each company always works perfectly.
Pointing to a bad company as an example of capitalism failing is like pointing to a lazy civil servant and saying we should abolish all government.
If the government decides airliners are a strategic priority and decides to interfere with the market, the cost of that decision is that tax money is going to be used to prop up the incumbent, instead of funding for the poor.
I think a little bit of industrial policy can be a good thing.