You must mean that if there were such a thing as a "capitalist"
country, they would do like countries with other style of economies
do, invent or discover ways to distribute things. But your point about
electronic media applies since if a society turns left or right in the
extreme, communist or fascist, then up to now it has been necessary
for the government to limit free speech and the free flow of ideas as
a form of power and control. Kinda like what is going on now with the
countries turn to the fascist right. In the midst of all this
political noise, what is hard to see is the corporate control over
what even the most liberal or conservative media can broadcast.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc
As an example the Soviets, when they existed as a left wing form of
totalitarianism, invented the satellite, at the same time greatly
regulating what people could learn through their media.
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite. Launched into geocentric
orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957, it was the first of a
series of satellites collectively known as the Sputnik program. The
unanticipated announcement of Sputnik 1's success precipitated the
Sputnik crisis in the United States and ignited the Space Race within
the Cold War.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1
> But it gets even better.
>
> Capitalism not only wants to make it possible for you to watch the
> matches from virtually any place in the world, but to do it at your
> convenience.
>
The business cycle or economic cycle refers to the fluctuations of
economic activity about its long term growth trend. The cycle involves
shifts over time between periods of relatively rapid growth of output
(recovery and prosperity), and periods of relative stagnation or
decline (contraction or recession). These fluctuations are often
measured using the real gross domestic product. Despite being named
cycles, these fluctuations in economic growth and decline do not
follow a purely mechanical or predictable periodic pattern...
...Because the periods of stagnation are painful for many who lose
their jobs, pressure arises for politicians to try to smooth out the
oscillations. An important goal of all Western nations since the Great
Depression has been to limit the dips. Government intervention in the
economy can be risky, however. For instance, some of Herbert Hoover's
efforts (including tax increases) are widely, though not universally,
believed to have deepened the depression.
Managing economic policy to even out the cycle is a difficult task in
a society with a complex economy, even when Keynesian theory is
applied. According to some theorists, notably nineteenth-century
advocates of communism, this difficulty is insurmountable. Karl Marx
in particular claimed that the recurrent business cycle crises of
capitalism were inevitable results of the system's operations. In this
view, all that the government can do is to change the timing of
economic crises. The crisis could also show up in a different form,
for example as severe inflation or a steadily increasing government
deficit. Worse, by delaying a crisis, government policy is seen as
making it more dramatic and thus more painful....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycle
Keynesian economics promotes a mixed economy where both the state and
the private sector have important roles. Keynesian economics seeks to
provide solutions to what some consider failures of laissez-faire
economic liberalism, which advocates that markets and the private
sector operate best without state intervention.
In Keynes' theory, macroeconomic trends can overwhelm the micro-level
behavior of individuals. Instead of the economic process being based
on continuous improvement in potential output, as most classical
economists had believed from the late 1700s on, Keynes asserted the
importance of aggregate demand for goods as the driving factor of the
economy, especially in periods of downturn. From this he argued that
government policies could be used to promote demand at a macro level,
to fight high unemployment and deflation of the sort seen during the
1930s. Keynes argued that the solution to depression was to stimulate
the economy ("inducement to invest") through some combination of two
approaches :
1. a reduction in interest rates.
2. Government investment in infrastructure - the injection of income
results in more spending in the general economy, which in turn
stimulates more production and investment involving still more income
and spending and so forth. The initial stimulation starts a cascade of
events, whose total increase in economic activity is a multiple of the
original investment.
A central conclusion of Keynesian economics is that there is no strong
automatic tendency for output and employment to move toward full
employment levels. This conclusion conflicts with the tenets of
classical economics, and those schools, such as supply-side economics
or the Austrian School, which assume a general tendency towards a
welcome equilibrium in a restrained money-creating economy. In the
'neoclassical synthesis', which combines Keynesian macro concepts with
a micro foundation, the conditions of General equilibrium allow for
price adjustment to achieve this goal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics
http://groups.google.com/group/van.general/msg/80a032350e675f46
http://www.google.com/search?q=Keynesian+economics
