No one can earn a million dollars honestly.
William Jennings Bryan, 1860 – 1925,
an American lawyer, statesman, and politician, three times the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States.

The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods.
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Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest [sic] of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
John Maynard Keynes, 1883 – 1946,
a British economist whose ideas, called Keynesian economics, had a major impact on modern economic and political theory, as well as on many governments’ fiscal policies.  

So far, we have noted many deficiencies in the capitalism which we practice.  The purpose behind such a look is to encourage thought and action about how to make capitalism work better.  So we look at more deficiencies.

Before beginning to write here, I looked at my notes.  There still are many examples of deficiencies.  What would be the point of reciting them?  Would a recitation of more deficiencies help persuade us that we must fix capitalism, lest the day come when, in a paroxysm of revulsion and repugnance, we the people castrate capitalism beyond recognition?  

Health Net Inc. Must Pay Client $9 million  
February 22, 2008

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Health Net Inc., a major California health insurance group, was ordered by an arbitration judge Friday to pay one of its clients more than $9 million.  

Arbitration judge Sam Cianchetti found that by canceling the insurance policy of Patsy Bates, a breast cancer patient who used Health Net for her health insurance, the company violated numerous California laws, the Los Angeles Times said.  

In his 21-page opinion, Cianchetti also criticized Health Net for rewarding its employees for saving insurance funds and canceling insurance claims like Bates's. ...  

And the health-care industry is not the only one which does not work under current capitalism.  One might argue that our culture would be infused with the desire to acquire:  

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this
single question: how much money will it bring in?
Alexis de Tocqueville, the Frenchman who authored Democracy in America.

The problem boils down to this:  capitalism is based on inequality, while democracy is based on equality.  

Remember Robert Reich, who was the Secretary of Labor under the Clinton Administration?  He authored Supercapitalism not long ago.  While I have not read the book, I saw an interview in which he said that we should not try to improve on the relationship between politics and corporations, but, rather, should keep corporations out of politics.  That is an interesting approach.  Perhaps we would have an equivalent to the separation of church and state:  we would keep corporations and the state separate.  

However, are there less visionary, more feasible ways to enable capitalism to operate without harming democracy as much?  We will explore possible ways in coming issues.

March 20, 2008