It has become very fashionable in the U.S. in recent years to criticize capitalism as an economic system – the endemic greed and self-interest. I think such criticism can be useful to a certain degree, as a counterbalance to the many folks on the right who have held capitalism so sacrosanct that NONE of its weaknesses or abuses can even be acknowledged, much less addressed.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I say let’s hear the criticism. It will help keep capitalism’s excesses in check.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I’ve been wondering lately, though, with all the harsh judgment of capitalism as an economic system, why democracy as a governing system gets a free pass – on both sides of the aisle. Why is capitalism fair game for condemnation while democracy seems entirely off limits?<\/p>\n\n\n
Why in the world do we seem to believe that if you can get a big enough group of people to agree on something that they will always necessarily come to a conclusion which is good and right and just?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Even more curious is this: how is this high regard for democracy maintained when the common current perception for most people on any given controversial topic is that half the population is misinformed, stupid and\/or evil?<\/p>\n\n\n
It is good to keep in mind that democracy has been defined as “two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch” (but not by Benjamin Franklin, as the internet would have it).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Just like with capitalism, I am not saying there’s a better option than democracy, just that we should not pretend like it’s infallible.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It has become very fashionable in the U.S. in recent years to criticize capitalism as an economic system – the endemic greed and self-interest. I think such criticism can be useful to a certain degree, as a counterbalance to the many folks on the right who have held capitalism so sacrosanct that NONE of its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9940"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9941,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9940\/revisions\/9941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}