And btw, this was a business where we had to work every single holiday except for Christmas, with no holiday bonus checks 

This is why American stores and services are available 365 days a year, while Europe is deserted once a week and several weeks in a row in the summer.

Capitalism's less impeded expansion has resulted in increasing exploitation 

How is this compatible with the other claims you do yourself? You know well that here you are referring to the global adoption of kapitalism. Which you have recognized brings people out of a greater deprivation under older systems. The increase in exploitation during early kapitalism is a necessary labor pain (see what I did there?) for the increase in prosperity which allows its final reduction. Marx knew it. It is a different proposition to fight kapitalism in the US and Europe, or in Third World countries which never have had it.

and imperialism across the world, and thus more wars

Imperialism is done for power, not for money.

Spain lost money over the Americas. Britain lost money over the Indian Raj. I think every European power lost money over Africa.

Yes, natural resources. So? It's more efficient to exploit them via the private enterprise than via state run Companies (like the East India companies were).

More so for wars. All wars are about power. Not money. Wars inherently destroy resources and infrastructure, apart from the loss of human life which is at the same time the loss of workers.

Let alone the evidence that interstate wars are well on the decline (imho, because of the non economic factor of greater weapons development making wars more dangerous even for the party starting them or who is initially more militarily powerful). Civil wars are at least stable (maybe increasing) but they too are about power: destroying your own country is never good business.

Capitalism has never been designed to bring wealth to the majority, 

Kapitalism has never been designed, period. If I had to choose the one feature kapitalism is *not*, that's exactly what I'd choose. It isn't designed. It is the opposite of being designed. It is the aggregate result of spontaneous interaction. The moment it is designed, you can no longer call that kapitalism, and that's it. No matter what the designer has in mind. (Such as the production quotas of Eastern bloc countries). Kapitalism doesn't contrast with socialism. It contrasts with planned economy, of which socialism is but one form.

but instead thrives on a ruthless competition that pits companies and individual workers against each other.

So does all of biology. Are you against biology too?

Putting a price tag on the needed services that the government currently still covers will simply force more workers to go without, or put them into further debt

There aren't more low price social services because the government crowds them out.

In such an environment, crime borne of extreme desperation becomes more lucrative than any form of honest work available to the masses at any given time.

Again with that myth.

I know enough poor people to know that poor people are not always or inherently or even generally criminals.
I know enough criminals to know that criminals are not always or inherently or even generally poor.

It's even more incomprehensible to me how this evident classist prejudice gets a pass, moreover how it is even a tenet of the Left. But it's the Right who hates the poor, remember!

The only reason so many of my neighbors can even afford some of the food their families require is because of social programs like food stamps, and their situation certainly does not improve as their food stamp allotment is continually reduced every year while the costing of living continuously goes up. 

If only the government didn't subsidize Big Agro... didn't forbid families from having their own crops and chickens in their own homes (zoning laws, health laws)... but blame the free market!

I've seen crowds of homeless people, as well as the mental state they are in. 

Homeless who are "mentally ill" (dishonest, undefinable, unscientific term) are not "mentally ill" because they're homeless. They're homeless because they're "mentally ill." They, regardless of their specific life history, at some point lost their livelihood not out of economic vagaries but out of "mental illness" and had no family to receive them (or such family chose to throw them away). They will never be able to be productive workers, even in your socialist system.

And still, the government complicates their plight by banning giving them food, banning begging, panhandling and hawking, banning loitering, usually banning them from carrying weapons, banning them from having drugs on them, and so on and so forth. It ain't the free market doing all of this.

You won't convince me that a system as advanced as ours that allows this is ethical or somehow working for everyone. Nor will you convince me that this situation would change once capitalists have their way 100%. 

Before kapitalism, they'd be locked up in madhouses far worse than even our worst criminal system jails today are. Or if they managed to remain on the streets, dead in a few months because there is not enough food scraps and other things that they can either be given by others or salvage from other people's trash.

all have hefty price tags that far outweigh the tiny allotment the boss class allows them for their hard work. And this is often with the meager social programs that you say are actually hurting these people! 

Given that they are paying half their income to the social programs, instead of keeping it in their pockets so they can use it for food, rent and phone bills, then yes, they're being hurt by the social programs. The best social program of all is the poor keeping their money rather than paying it in taxes to parasites who make far more than them for doing nothing, namely bureaucrats.

I'll gladly pit the ethics of that against the ethics of what you're promoting any day of the week, and every day of the week

If only you were European so this was illegal... :P







Cuteness is to die for
Cuteness cannot fail
Cuteness knows no limit
Cuteness will prevail