LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
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make ourselves richer, more leisured, and increasingly savvy in the future. This has been going on since cave people deliberately chipped extra flint spear points to trade with for the smoked mammoth slices the neighbors in the cave next door intentionally didn’t eat all of. And it will continue to go on until we are taking our excess gray matter to the brain farm to grow an additional medulla oblongata to exchange with space aliens for the Whoopee Rays they didn’t use up. Capitalism, on the other hand, is the means by which capital is put to work. And 'Mutant Capitalism' is terrifying. But fortunately, what's immutable is capital itself.
capitalism is capable of taking some very strange forms. For example, socialism, communism, fascism, and crony capitalism are all types of capitalism. The difference being that, unlike free-market capitalism, the capital isn’t primarily held by private parties and/or isn’t put to work according to market principles of supply and demand. • With socialism, the capital is held by dopey, dreamy, featherhead political and bureaucratic know-it-alls who are – occasionally – well-meaning but who are always self-serving. • With communism, the capital is held by murderous totalitarian thugs. • With fascism, you get the same thugs, plus the business people who have brown-nosed them. • With crony capitalism, you hold the capital... but you’d better do what Putin, the Saudi royal family, or Bill and Hillary Clinton tell you to do with it. We’ve survived the pinkos, the Reds, the Nazis, and (I hope) Bill and Hillary. If we keep a level head and put our common-sense Oxygen Destroyer to work sucking the air out of the monsters, we’ll survive Mutant Capitalism too.
Mike Smith Editorial Cartoon used with the permission of Mike Smith, King Features Syndicate and the Cartoonist Group. All rights reserved.
14 | August 2017
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