I vastly prefer "free enterprise" or "free markets" to capitalism for two reasons. First, the word capitalism is antiquated - large amounts of capital are no lo

I vastly prefer "free enterprise" or "free markets" to capitalism for two reasons. First, the word capitalism is antiquated - large amounts of capital are no longer a requirement to succeed in business. Second, you can have arguments about what "capitalism" is - but "free enterprise" and "free market" are a lot more clearly descriptive. > (The point being that it's a weakness of capitalism, or at least of the contemporary system everybody calls capitalism, that institutions that would otherwise die off are able to preserve themselves through political influence and other unsavory means.) Now, this gets to the root of it - sectors like banking and healthcare are explicitly not free enterprise/free market. The entire banking system is a set of regulations, starting with the piece of paper of no inherent value that you're required to accept for all debts public and private in the USA, to the Federal Reserve choosing how much of this new paper to create whenever it likes, and so on. Healthcare, likewise, with its artificially restricted supply of doctors, ridiculous licensing requirements (10-12 years, or more, hundreds of thousands of dollars of fees to become a doctor - I understand it's an important job, but they could get it lower). FDA requirements adding millions of dollars of cost and years of time to new drugs coming to market. Needing to pay $50 to see a doctor to get a prescription for basic antibiotics. The sectors people usually point to as failures of capitalism - banking, healthcare - are not coincidentally the least free market sectors in the United States. People don't talk about this enough when they talk about the banking crash - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act "The Community Reinvestment Act (or CRA, Pub.L. 95-128, title VIII, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.) is a United States federal law designed to encourage commercial banks and savings associations to meet the needs of borrowers in all segments of their communities, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.[1][2][3] Congress passed the Act in 1977 to reduce discriminatory credit practices against low-income neighborhoods, a practice known as redlining.[4][5] The Act requires the appropriate federal financial supervisory agencies to encourage regulated financial institutions to meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered, consistent with safe and sound operation (Section 802.). To enforce the statute, federal regulatory agencies examine banking institutions for CRA compliance, and take this information into consideration when approving applications for new bank branches or for mergers or acquisitions." 80% of the subprime mortgages came from meeting Community Reinvestment Act standards. So when someone says, "The last decade proved free enterprise doesn't work" - I'm always a little amazed if they use banking as an example. It's got to be one of the least free sectors in the United States.