Crony Capitalism Raising an Old Stink

Only 50 per cent of respondents to a recent U.S. poll reacted positively to the word "capitalism", reports Nicholas D. Kristof in today's New York Times.  Forty per cent reacted negatively,  In the 18 to 29 age group, people who held the negative view were in the majority.  Think about what that means.

Kristif interprets the result to mean that crony capitalism is turning America's dream team into socialists.  No poll results were made available on what reaction that term received.  But for at least two generations, socialism has been likened to devil worship throughout America.  If Kristof  and the Pew poll are right, we are seeing a tectonic shift in the core values of the generation that is currently expected to turn the ship of state around. 

Just to be clear again, Prophets of Boom has always held that the insights reported here do not challenge capitalism as the economic basis for a just society.  Like democracy it is the best system we have.  But it's far from perfect. 

Wait a minute.  Doesn't this language have a familiar ring to it?  Anyone who set foot on a campus in the Sixties and were not yet turned off by the self-serving, blowhard politics of later decades might recognize that these concepts have been used to take some of the stink out of the system for generations. 

Ironically, the despotism of international communism's rogue's gallery was used to give  socialism a bad name in the salons of self-interest. 

What is common to both is the balance of power.  A natural hierarchy always seems to corrupt the best of intentions. 

Will technology's new reach be the great leveller, as seems to be the case in the Arab Spring, in Obama's first election victory, in the Occupy Movement or in a multitude of disputes that now see just-in-time demonstrations of force around the world?   No doubt a networked world is awakening the power within us all.