It is amazing how many people pretended to believe Professor Milton Friedman’s assertion that capitalism is naturally self-regulating. It is patently false. Consider:

• Capitalism naturally creates an exaggerated boom and bust cycle because corporations naturally fire employees and stop spending at the first sign of a recession.
• Capitalism, left to itself, reduces competition through mergers and acquisitions. Competition is the key to why capitalism works as well as it does. In the 1890 era of unregulated American capitalism, many sectors collapsed to monopolies and small oligarchies, just as oil, media, cable, agribusiness… has today, killing competition.
• Consider that unregulated Chinese milk producers and American tobacco companies, when unregulated, went so far as to deliberately kill off their customers in the pursuit of increased profit.
• In pursuit of profit, unregulated corporations successfully reduce wages below subsistence. This is below the value of food and shelter given to slaves or livestock.
• Because corporations are unaware of the value of waste, they pollute rather than recycle, because they imagine doing so is more profitable.
• Consider how unregulated American financial institutions managed to pull the entire world economy into a black hole through deliberately bad investments.

~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 62)