[teal]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Teal, you seem to gone off on a tangent from a few words in Geo's post and missed the meaning of it entirely...

Capitalism is not a government. It does not require any specific form of government to be in practice. Democracies, monarchies, oligarchies, etc. can all have capitalistic governments. Capitalism does not require "real little government", no more than "real strong central government" requires or creates "communism". Economic and government theory are not that simplistic.

Laisez fair capitalism (as championed by Ayn Rand) *is* a form of Government or to be more precise a form of society which defines all the laws and norms which the people in that society will practice and adhere to.

Topic of discussion was "communism vs. capitalism". I fail to see how my post was a tangent.

Capitalism *does* require certain types of governments in order to be effective. That's the whole point. Its not a magic bullet you can just pull out of your hat and say its the best and that's how you create wealth and help people. You need strong and fair government in order to realize the benefits of capitialism. Question should be not how do we instill free market capitalism on as many countries and places in the earth as possible, but how do we help people obtain fair and strong Governments which can make good laws and have the power to enforce them? A much harder question.

Certainly you can run capitalism under many forms of government, but it will be most effective under that type of Government which allows everyone to play the game and has enough power to enforce its laws. Once again, how you set up such a Government is an extremely complex question.

Cheers!