Quote from: Incodium Coin on May 17, 2019, 02:26:01 AM

While various countries have come close, no country can boast of being a purely capitalist or socialist country, not in the purest form anyway. There are aspects of socialism in capitalist countries and there is enough evidence of the price mechanism at work in socialist countries. l do agree with some of the points you make, but the conclusion is overly simplistic.
NO, true power doesn't lie behind the barrel of a gun. This was the thinking behind to race to amass weapons in the 70s and 80s, but going by that the USSR would still be existing. l could go on, but you get the drift.

Sorry if I didn't make this clear. The true purpose of this essay was not to measure the various degrees of free markets and liberal values in different countries. As I mentioned, there are major differences. And yes, people do live much better in the West.

The purpose is to showcase how the Western power structure, in the way it really works, is structurally and fundamentally no different from socialism. One major similarity is that it uses deception and military power to support what is effectively a transfer of wealth to the elites, at the core of the system.

Remember, even socialist governments didn't say we'll take from you, out loud. They said, give us the power and we'll take care of you. The only real difference between us and them is that their power was in the full economic realm, and our elites' powers are hidden and confined only to the monetary and financial realms.

But since money and finance are at the heart of everything, our system is not fundamentally different from openly socialist ones.

Socialist countries didn't say that their soldiers and spies existed to keep the population under control. They said these were necessary to fight the 'enemies of the people.' Ours exist to fight/control the 'enemies of freedom' who just happen to be at the head of countries sitting on a lot of oil, oil that can be used to prop up the value of the dollar. There's no fundamental difference between Soviet tanks entering rebellious Prague or Budapest, and US-created civil war to topple a rebellious Syrian leader. (Even though oil is involved in the Venezuelan but not the Syrian case.)

The key thing to remember is that power corrupts, and that the only way to clean the corruption is to take the power of money and finance from the elites, in any country.