While reading Paul Krugman’s excellent piece, Sex & Drugs & the Spill, in the NYT this morning, I came across this comment. It pretty much sums up the way I feel. But it’ll probably take another hundred years, if we make it, before it’s realized in this increasingly right wing country. Thanks, Dim from Texas, whoever you are.

It has become clear that we need much stronger regulations of many industries and to make those regulations work we need a good competent government, I completely agree with you there. When the Soviet Union collapsed this was portrayed as a definitive proof that capitalism, or market economy, is superior to socialism. Of course, Soviet Union was rotten from the inside by over-regulation much much earlier, but events in recent years indicate that market economy is not that superior. Russia was just a wrong country to set an example. If socialism, or even communism, first took root in a country like Germany or Japan the result would have been quite different (no, I didn’t not forget about East Germany which was forced into a soviet type system). I feel Karl Max was right and we will all eventually end up in an economic system that is a healthy hybrid of socialism and market economy. And the role of socialism will be played by strong regulations, channeling the energy of the market economy toward common good, a system which is more fair for all, with checks and balances, not rigged so much to benefit the insiders – Wall Street, corporations, politicians – as it is now.