I need to watch some right-wing docmentaries to balence my brain out.

[Ajidica]

What I meant by moderate conservative is no Limbaughs or Becks. What I'm looking for is a conservative version of The Young Turks. They have a moderate liberal lean, so I'm looking for a moderate conservative lean. There are a couple of their clips in the Rush Limbaugh thread, pgs 1 and 3.

 

[Gogf]

After watching the first two episiodes of Friedmen's Free to choose series (but skipping most of the parts with him sitting around talking to his friends), and keeping in mind what I've learned from Sicko and Capitalism: A Love Story, here is my conclusion on capitalism so far:

There are good aspects of capitalism such as:
1. If nobody's willing to buy it, it's not made
2. It encourages harmony and peace between business partners
3. It forces markets to adapt to change and technology
However there are also very bad aspects of it:
1. It objectifies human dignity, health, freedom, and well being. It makes these things into commodities.
2. It gives corperations a dangerous amount of control over government.
The problems of capitalism are severe and must be solved or capitalism must be replaced. However, no matter what we do, we should try to hold on to the good aspects of capitalism. Of course as there's no perfect system, some compromises might be nessessary.

This is a really messed up way to look at government. I suppose if you're some kind of socio-utilitarian trying to plan out the uberstate and determine which system would lead to THE MOST UTILS then yes, maybe this kind of thinking makes sense. But if you're a self-confident socio-utilitarian who feels comfortable imposing whatever system they want to maximize society's output, then why not just impose a dictatorship and make all the decisions?

The reason that capitalism is preferable to socialist systems is that it is what we are left with if we remove excessive state involvement in non-state affairs. Under most circumstances, the state has no authority to interfere with the free exchange of goods, at least in the way that socialists want it to. People want to conduct economic activity, and unless there is a compelling reason, then state coercion to prevent or modify that economic activity is at the very least troubling. It is more important to preserve personal liberty than to empower bureaucrats to enforce someone's vision of a socio-economic apex.

With regards to the objectification of "human dignity," health, and well-being, or at least my understand of what you're trying to say (you're going to have to clarify what specifically you mean by this): this is not a problem with capitalism. These things are all already objectified, and the only difference between capitalism and non-capitalist frameworks is that in the former the market provides them and in the latter the state does. Capitalism commoditizes the items and services to which people have tied these basics, but it does not objectify them itself. I'm also very interested in your (hopefully forthcoming) explanation of what it means to "objectify freedom" and how capitalism does this.

As far as corporations controlling the government goes, that doesn't trouble me. What should trouble you more is people controlling the government, and that's going to happen under any sane system.

 

[El_Machinae]

To the OP:

Universities are holding seminar series on a wide assortment of topics all the time. I highly recommend against documentaries, in general, because they're always biased. Instead, if you're interested in a topic, look up the topic in Youtube with key words such as 'professor' and 'university'.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

But if you're a self-confident socio-utilitarian who feels comfortable imposing whatever system they want to maximize society's output, then why not just impose a dictatorship and make all the decisions?

I have no idea how the hell you quantified his position as this from the statements he made.

With regards to the objectification of "human dignity," health, and well-being, or at least my understand of what you're trying to say (you're going to have to clarify what specifically you mean by this): this is not a problem with capitalism. These things are all already objectified, and the only difference between capitalism and non-capitalist frameworks is that in the former the market provides them and in the latter the state does. Capitalism commoditizes the items and services to which people have tied these basics, but it does not objectify them itself. I'm also very interested in your (hopefully forthcoming) explanation of what it means to "objectify freedom" and how capitalism does this.

The problem is when those things are undervalued with respect to business and consumption.

As far as corporations controlling the government goes, that doesn't trouble me.

Nothing wrong at all with the things corporations lobby for?