>Surely you're not suggesting that communism/socialism is better.
Could have been better had it been done right. But even in the best of such systems (the one I lived in :), there was too much distance between what was promised and proclaimed and what was really going on. And that was the one system which actually had free enterprise - but not private ownership over the means of production, which meant the workers managed the company, shared the profits, but couldn't sell their shares because these were "society owned". It looked fine on paper (except this ownership thing), and it worked fine in most cases, but it was never given a real chance. It was always under the rule of The Party.
Capitalism would also be fine, if it delivered what it promised: equal chance for everyone, and best living for most of the people. However, whatever was accomplished in that area during the last seventy years seems to be reversing now - the rich are getting richer, the poor poorer, and the middle vanishing.
>>As for the 35 mil, it was upped to 350 once it became obvious that it's miserably low compared to what Spain or Britain have given.
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>It doesn't matter why, as long as we give what we can tot he right people who can help.
May I quote this from BBC's webpage:
The United States proposed $35 million immediately but this was criticised by, among others, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, who said he "went through the roof when I heard them bragging about $35m. We spend $35m before breakfast in Iraq."See for yourself:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4137867.stm>If people really want democracy, freedom and free enterprise system, they should be willing to fight for it. The people in the former Soviet empire, they're the ones that have to do it. If they really want it they will, if not, they and their grand childern will face another Stalin and Brezhnev.
Do you really believe the people knew what they wanted? They only knew what they didn't. Specially in Russia - the number of people who knew two bits about how capitalism works was probably below one in a thousand. So when Gorbachov started dismantling the USSR (under the guise of fixing it), they had no choice but to take the propaganda for granted, hook, line and sinker.
To fight for something, you first need to know what it is.
Likewise, the ignorance is equal on this side - all I've heard people here talking about socialism are the scary stories cooked up in the worst of the propaganda machineries. Sometimes I get the feeling that everyone thinks we all lived in a total 1984 there.
It's almost as if someone portrayed USA by listing the crime rate, pollution, national debt, personal debt per capita, number of homeless and unemployed, and the percentage of overall wealth owned by the top 1% - omitting the fact that almost everyone has a car, that the roads are great, that the communications are so good they're hard to imagine to anyone who didn't try them, that the trains go on time, that you have an absolute freedom of thought, word and gathering etc etc.
