Bottle has a bit of a breakdown

It occurs to me that there is a significant difference between "individuals own the means of production" and "an individual owns the means of production." 

The former would imply that each person has the means and knowledge to produce what is needed and exchange it with others for mutual benefit. This is, i think, what most Americans have in mind when they think of what America calls Capitalism. 

The latter, however, appears to be the prevailing reality in which an individual controls not simply his own life and labor, but the entire economic life of a community. In short, a monopoly, a monarchy, a dictatorship. This is obviously what most people find unacceptable and oppressive. 

I'm reminded of the story of Putin's car. Not that this has anything to do with Putin, i just recently came across it and it's just a good illustration of the dynamics at play. After he left the KGB and the Soviet Union collapsed, Putin owned a personal car. In addition to driving his friends and family around to where they needed to go (the obvious result of being the only person with a car) he also occasionally "bombed," aka illegally acted like a taxi for money. 

You can look at that situation in many different ways. At face value it seems ludicrous for that to be a crime. On the other hand, if enough individuals start doing it then it will economically impact both "real" taxi drivers and any form of public transportation. What distinguishes those two situations? The answer is of course taxation. 

Keep in mind, we are thinking about honest systems where supply and demand are inverse equivalents; the demand for the service is equal to the demand to provide that service. In reality, these inversions are often unequal, and that ever changing inequivalence is what drives price fluctuations. 

So, taxation both legitimizes the profession itself and stabilizes the economic exchange such that those who wish to drive a bus or taxi are less susceptible to varying demand; for example, a bus driver isn't paid according to the number of passengers, rather according the overall economic value of public transportation in relation to all of the alternative modes of transportation. Taxes in this sense being used to save and subsidize appropriately. 

I mention all of that to underline the real dynamics at play when we consider the difference between a private individual owned business and a corporate government run business because that difference is not as straightforward as most people think. 

Logically, not everyone can be a full time bus driver; there would be no passengers to necessitate busses, or busses would be the only type of vehicle anyone could manufacture. 

Equally logical, imagining a Governor running the public transportation system is no different than any other individual running it, except that a Governor has theoretically more power, influence, and resources to use and/or abuse at his or her discretion. Pardon the pun, that's not our bus stop. All it tells us is that structurally speaking a Governor and a Mob boss are pretty much the same. Can you really say that the people who loved Pablo Escobar loved him less than the people who loved Lenin or Reagan? Likewise for those who loathed them. 

No, what we're really thinking about is the distinction between an abstract system of rules vs individual discretion. Is a corrupt legislature any different than a malevolent tyrant? Are the rules if practiced in good faith an adequate regulator of the game, or is every meeting between heads of state merely an exercise in determining whether or not to send our respective armies out to kill each other tomorrow? 

Well, we need to address this bizarre concept of a "free market" that has somehow blurred the distinction between a monarch and a squabbling group of wannabe monarchs; the idea of Liberalism being simultaneously championed by the would-be kings who then decry the process the moment one emerges victorious. There is no market, it exists only in the past as recorded and interpreted data and in the future as the hypothetically speculated change of that interpretation; more specifically how that interpretation will change with the accumulation of new data. What we are really contemplating is the nature of economic freedom. Who benefits from an enforced general ignorance of socio-economic activity and who benefits from a codified system of stable relationships? The answer, not surprisingly, is the same in both cases: he who owns the product of production. 

Let's put that into a real life situation. Insulin. Does the total production of insulin belong to the kings and queens who own its manufacture? Does it belong the people who need insulin to stay alive? Or, a third more difficult to grasp possibility, does the production/manufacture actually belong to the balance of the exchange itself? I think this is the real answer, though it is very hard to conceptualize. Actually achieving the balance between need and fulfillment without unduly burdening either side should be our goal. 

Capitalism, for all the good it CAN do, has the very real downside that only the most popular (not the best, not the most valuable in terms of money or equivalence) will survive until the next popular thing comes along. 

This is just my personal opinion, but a government that refuses to take on that responsibility is just as bad as a government that misappropriates its resources. In other words, a government does not make the rules to suit some ulterior motive. Instead, it must hold itself accountable to the resources it manages and we must be completely uncompromising in "unelecting" any representative who misunderstands that responsibility as a personal success. 

Which brings me to to this non-sequiter, how did Republicanism morph from Left-wing to Right-wing? How did Thomas Paine, for example, morph from the reviled and ostracized Leftist defender of the French and American Revolutions, whom Teddy Roosevelt called a "filthy little atheist," the New York Times called a Socialist, whose complete works were published by the Communist Party in 1937, and cited by Eugene Debs in his sedition trial, praised by freakin' Marx who i've been talking about ad nauseam, and secretly but documentedly admired by Lincoln, turn into the go to guy for Reagan and Glenn Beck? Reagan was a union boss before becoming Governor then President and abandoning any sense of logical reality, by the way. 

Come to think of it, how is Putin the former KGB agent who quit over how mad he was at the attempted coup of Gorbechev's liberalism a more understandable evil Capitalist than any of our billionaires? 

Look i'm fully willing to admit that i have no idea what's going on, but doesn't that really mean everyone out there is an actual lunatic? Am i the only weirdo left on earth with a dictionary in my house? Left is Right and up is down like that super annoying Marble Madness level i could never beat, and i'm supposed to give a crap? 

In fact, the more i read that dictionary, the more i give up. I need a 1990s English to 2020s Gibberish translation manual. Sam Kinison impression on 3,2,1...

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!