The flaw in capitalism is the opportunity to fleece. The remedy for that is a judicious and alert regulatory and enforcement system, and a set of laws written carefully and intelligently to define the limits of acceptable investment behavior.

The second great flaw is, as Richard meniotned, concentration--of wealth, of influence, and of control.

100,000 people, taken as a population, will have a dispersed, unfocused influence on public affairs, with all of them having different opinions.

Put them in one corporation that makes lots of profit, and those 100,000 people are now fueling an entity that is wholly steered by perhaps ten. And those ten deliver a lot more clout via the corporation than they, or all 100,000 members of the corporation, would ever do as individuals. So not only is the power concentrated, it is also steered by a small number not necessarily interested in the broadest or greatest good for their members, or for the public at large, but for the corporation and their share-holders.

It is true the 100,000 have many more votes than the ten, but in terms of influence and control, that is offset by political correctness and intimidation of labor pools.

And in those forms of influence outside the vote (swaying rewpresentatives, weighing in on legislation, promoting frameworks of popular issues) the ten at the helm can wield MUCH more power than the 100,000 as private individuals, with a few exceptions.

This concentration of leveraged power is the unsolved problem of capitalism, and I agree that it is a problem. The flip-side of the same issue is the inordinate influence of faceless shareholders which can be multiplied in force by influencing corporate policies, without regard for those who make up the body of the corporation--the 100,000 who actually do the work. This disconnect may be the fatal falw in our legal embodiment of the capitalist system, but it is not some fatal flaw in private ownership, jusst a hangover from feudal law, IMHO, one which can be evolved out of the machine and thus outgrown or cured.


A