Greed and need
Unfettered free market capitalism is motivated and recklessly driven by greed. Possibly it was Dale Carnegie, who wrote "The more you get, the more you want".
The periodic financial crash of the US stock market is the glaring example of this insatiable greed of the rich. For them, the stock market is a very high stake gambling den, with the national economic stability as the stake! It's domino effect is disastrous! But do they care?
No; because Uncle Sam is there to bail them out; maybe, with some dent in their fortune and wealth; which they believe to be something "easy come, easy go". The current financial "meltdown"; is the end result of this high stake irresponsible gambling in the stock market.
The real sufferers are the ordinary average American salary earners. They park their hard earned savings in stocks, in the hope of a satisfactory return on their investment, towards old age financial security.
They are the worst sufferers; unlike the financial tycoons who indulge in stock market speculation only to get rich quick. It is these financial sharks who are the hub and spokes of the capitalist free market wheel, where unrestricted wheeling and dealing is the order of the day! Now it has come to a crashing halt, at least temporarily.
The bail-out that the US government plans, tapping onto taxpayers money, is essentially to cushion the losses of the super-rich investment gamblers.
The hope is that some of this cushion will trickle down to ordinary share holders; who may some years ahead; if they hang on to the now worthless share scripts, get back their money. This could be between fifty to eighty percent of their investment, or may be all of it; for some lucky ones.
In contrast, socialism tends to satisfy the basic needs of the people.
These are, food, shelter, healthcare, followed by education and infrastructure needs of transportation and communication services. These basically improve the general standard of living for the people to a reasonable level. These are the primary goals of socialist governments based on the principles enunciated by Karl Marx. There is no scope for speculative free access to capital financial market. All profit and loss is in a sense "of the government, for the government, by the government". Capitalistic share market operation is non-existent there.
China, which is trying to adopt to greedy Western ways by encouraging some private investment has burnt its fingers in the recent share market hiccup; possibly tied to its joint venture or direct investment of overseas capital coming from Western sources.
In socialistic model, citizens are encouraged to buy various types of government securities, with guaranteed reasonable return on investment.
This neither makes anyone overnight billionaire, nor overnight beggar-- the necessary evil of unfettered free financial markets of the West!
Our government should take a lesson from this and introduce rules and regulations to keep the stock market under constant vigil, and pre-empt any such explosive financial decompression or meltdown before it happens.
It is now taking place in the Western free-market economies!
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