I like to think that people are better off now than in ancient times, but none of us were there so we really don't know. Money made that possible. Money let people work out how to work togeather. We talk about slave wages now, but remember reading about when it was just slaves with no wages? They would split up families to sell separately. What we have now ain't perfect but this is just us, just humanity's best efforts with what we know now.
We all do the best we can as far as we see it. To an extent we all help other people, and to an extent we all drain resources. The "crazy state of capitalism" is because money is just an iou, an abstract symbol. The world never has been "perfect". Capitalism is our collective efforts.
There are kids starving and being blown up still in the world. I wish their countries had better capitalism, even though we have problems here and kids still suffer, the suffering is less than the alternative. I'll take our crazy inequity over crazy malaria and bombings anyday thanks.

If you're not part of the soloution, you're part of the problem. Jonlaw, take up a new hobby, studying the law that empowers Congress to “regulate commerce with foreign nations,” and try to figure out how we planetary natives can do business togeather correctly. Listen to your wife and do something with your talents. A lot of smart people are already looking into it, at least I hope they are. But the solutions you see, what you see happening, is the answers found by people who tried. Quit yer bitching and start researching and developing legislation. Peace.

I shouldn't have added my 2c when the conversation is this weird.

Eta: HK, yes, deregulation hurts the working man's wages. Honestly I noticed Mitt Romney saying he wants to deregulate the oilfield industry during his fix America speech and I wondered if anyone heard him say it or knew what it would mean for the local economy, although he might have been good for the rest of the country which is suffering right now.

Youth lives by personality, age lives by calculation. -- Aristotle on a calendar