You are mixing up your symptoms and causes, Ake. The issues of private ownership --where someone borrows or earns the means to build a factory and organizes it and makes products and therefore --after having paid those who worked for him and those who supplied him with materials--enjoys a portion of the profits therefrom--are NOT the causes of despondency, drug use, and so on. Your list of social ills would be reduced if those who are in apathy and despond engaged in a little productive capitalism of their own.

Unless you can enlighten me (as I asked above) as to how the nature of capitalism breeds these evils you bemoan, I will have to conclude that your speaking through your BVDs.

THis is not to say that I don't think a good deal of social engineering is necessary to make the whole social spectrum of people more productive and more decent. I do think so. But you have to name the right cause of the problem if you really want to cure the problem, and private ownership is not the cause of the problem.

A