"When a business has to shut down . . . what that really means is that its customers valued its products less . . ."

This is exactly true. I've tried to point this out to folks who complain that WalMart "destroys" other businesses.

No, it isn't WalMart - it is the customers that put other stores out of business.

If they really don't want WalMart in their town the solution is quite simple - do NOT shop there! Patronize the local mom and pop store. Support the local store that you claim you want in your community. There, simple solution - the capitalist free market at work.

That's all well and good. But we don't need a scholar for this. Any reasonably bright eighth-grader could tell us the same thing.
Our market is only partially free. Local, state, and Federal spending make up about a third of our GDP. Then add in further market distortions from regulation, and that's when we need a scholar to tell us if our ass is punched or bored (a machinist's colloquialism).

This is one reason I don't enjoy shopping much; you can't always know just how awful the source is, so it's often best to limit shopping and stick to the basic necessities, so you can use the extra time saved to research what you DO have to buy.

It never occurred to me to buy shrimp, simply because it's expensive. Imagine how I felt when I heard about the slave trade as connected with shrimp.

And since I don't like giving free advertising to any clothing line by buying clothes that have trademarks on them, I not only avoid those, I buy clothes mainly from thrift stores.

The idea that people can vote with their wallets is what really frightens critics of capitalism. The idea that things change, sometimes rapidly. The idea that to stay employable one has to upgrades one's skill sets on a constant basis is frightening to an inadequately educated person who cannot easily gain new skills. So, socialism, which promises to take care of him for life at his current skill level is appealing - until he goes to the market and discovers he no longer has a vote.

That he cannot get a flat-panel television because to offer that would mean shutting down the CRT television factory and idling hundreds of workers who only know how to build CRT devices.

Or that buying a new car means only being able to buy a 2-stroke engine vehicle because offering a modern car with airbags, ABS, and a fuel-effieicnt ending would mean shutting down the 2-stroke car company and laying off employees whose only skill is in building 2-stroke engines, who never learned to build modern internal combustion engines. (Trabant, anyone?)

A virtual antique when it was designed in the 1950s, the Trabant was East Germany's answer to the VW Beetle — a "people's car," as if the people didn't have enough to worry about. Trabants smoked like an Iraqi oil fire, when they ran at all, and often lacked even the most basic of amenities, like brake lights or turn signals. ~ TIME

http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1658545_1658533_1658030,00.html

When the outdated skills of the workforce decide what gets built, nothing new gets built.

With Eastern European dictatorships, Southeast Asian genocides, and a soon-to-be-bankrupt Western Europe, we have so many examples of how bad anti-capitalism is. Why are we still having this debate?

"we have so many examples of how bad anti-capitalism is. Why are we still having this debate?"

I though you answered yourself quite elegantly Conan. People would rather feel safe than actually be safe, or free, or rich even. Try talking to some Russians living in the US. 9 out of 10 of them would rather go back to soviet style communism. They find the whole philosophy and reality of American style capitalism terrifying. They may hate Stalin now, but they love Putin (for now). And be careful making any comparisons. There is little real difference between the two but if you point that out they may get violent. And it's not just the Russians. People in general feel that way. Latin America, Africa, the middle east, China. People love their dictators. Obama has a pen and a phone. Is it any shocker his supporters feel the Bern?

Anti-capitalism or anti-unfettered-greed?

Because frankly I'd rather have unions and a healthy middle class than a winner-take-all third world society of the 1% slaughtering everyone beneath them.

Let them eat cake: famous last words of the pampered who didn't see it coming.

"No, it isn't WalMart - it is the customers that put other stores out of business."

The customer cannot understand that their money, not the company's, pays the wages of those poor people who can't make a living wage flipping burgers and misspelling "Whopper" on the marquee - and the taxes a corporation pays. They think they GET money from the government at tax refund time, have no idea what the boxes on their W-2 mean or how they got there, and can't name the taxes on their phone or gasoline. They'll level an acre of biodiversity on a barrier island and then park a Prius in the driveway. They'll fertilize their lawn heavily, then wonder why the canal in front of their house turns brown and dies.

They just want the product. Don't care how it gets here.

The price of awareness is discontent. Can't have that.

Anti-capitalism or anti-unfettered-greed? ~ Posted by: Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at February 22, 2016 7:29 AM

Socialism gives the greed of the 1% government power and no checks or balances.

Capitalism puts economic weapons in the hands of the 99%. It also puts responsibility to take charge of one's own welfare in their hands, which is why it's scary.

Because frankly I'd rather have unions and a healthy middle class than a winner-take-all third world society of the 1% slaughtering everyone beneath them. ~ Posted by: Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at February 22, 2016 7:29 AM

When unions served to organize the workers' sale of their skills and labor to the industrialist, they served a purpose.

Then, the union leadership got fat and greedy. Senior Leadership folks of the AFL-CIO make high six-figure salaries, but still want us to believe they're just folks working for a living. What's more important to them, that the increasingly less-skilled rank and file make a decent living, or that they continue to make a good one?

https://www.unionfacts.com/employees/AFL-CIO

"... I'd rather have unions and a healthy middle class ..." ~Gog

I'd love to see some evidence that links the two. If anything unions, especially public sector unions, are what hollowed out the middle class. Or are you just saying you want both but they are unrelated.

"Then, the union leadership got fat and greedy. "

This started happening early on. All of the major unions had Mob ties by the mid-1930s. Don't forget that the government shielded the unions from competition. Companies never had the option of going to a different union to replace a failing one, and the way union election laws were set up, any union worker that advocated either for a different union or for non-union status was literally risking his life by doing so.

At one time the AFL-CIO controlled nearly every non-trivial-sized union in the United States. Unions were allowed to unionize entire industries without competition. Starting up a new union in an industry where the AFL-CIO already had a union was nearly impossible. What broke the AFL-CIO's back was not evil Republicans; it was foreign competition who weren't having to pay the overhead of union featherbedding and corruption.

Unions? They have NEVER helped me! All they ever did was steal from my paycheck calling it "dues."

Employees do NOT get paid when there is a strike; but union leaders still collect their regular paychecks. So, I'll support unions the day the very leaders who are pressing for a strike also take a loss of pay when there is a strike.

That bag of groceries to "help out" when there is a strike just doesn't cut it.

Oh, and the stereotyping they pull with the groceries is crap! The employees with Latino names got Goya products in their grocery bags, the Italians got jars of tomato sauce and spaghetti, and the Germans and Irish got sausage and cabbage in theirs! And, no, that wasn't something from The Onion; they really did that. Who ever thought that up was an idiot. Did they think we wouldn't compare? Effing idiots!

And, I'll never forgive the bastards when they showed up (uninvited) at my father's funeral with a Bible in a box - a white guy and a black guy who were the union leaders talking about "brotherhood."

The union didn't do shit for my widowed mother. But, the company my father worked for did; they offered her free services for life. And they were true to their word until 20 years later when the company was sold. The guys my father work along side were also helpful; they, for a couple of years, showed up at my mother's house to cut the lawn, stack firewood, etc. But, the union guys were never heard from again; I assume it was because they weren't collecting any money from our family any more.

Unions have outlived their pathetic usefulness.