There's something very annoying about revolutionaries of all kinds, something programmers should know instinctively: you don't throw away good entropy.
It's very nice to criticize a system because a worker in Bolivia has it rough. You feel very good when you say "Something must be done!", but if by any chance you'd get any power all you'd do with this attitude would be to destroy. The current system works. It puts bread on the table of that Bolivian worker, and on pretty much everybody else's. If you want to change this you _must_ start by understanding the current system and its strengths and weaknesses. To try and replace it, or change it without understanding it can only end in ruin.
And if you look closer at that specific worker you may find interesting things. You may find for example that the reason mining is the only thing he can do is not due to capitalism, but because some local politician decided (much like you) that capitalism is not the way to go. And that the evil foreigners who only want money must be kept far away, and let in only on a leash. So the greedy foreigners can't come to that part of Bolivia and build a car factory which makes cheap Fords and Fiats because well, nobody really wants capitalists to make more money of their backs. So the poor miner keeps on going down into the mine every day.
Free trade is good for poor people. Globalization is good for poor people. Capitalism is good for poor people. When you see them failing, there's usually some politician who thinks that if he controls every aspect of the economy that's still called capitalism.
Thanks for your illustrative example of the No True Scotsman fallacy. Good to know that capitalism, by definition, cannot fail, since anything which fails will be redefined to not be capitalism.
Now, get in line with all the "but communism was never really tried" folks.
Capitalism with strong state control is called Mercantilism. Or proto-capitalism, if you want. A few hundred years ago the main tools used today existed already: banks, loans, stocks, contracts of all kinds. The main difference was that the state believed (much like in a lot of third-world countries today) that tight regulation is normal and necessary. The moment the main source of income shifted from agriculture to industry and commerce was the moment the state started to use it for its own purposes (which usually were war related).
Not surprisingly, it did not work very well. Regulations went as far as dictate the type of products which could be produced, by whom and with what technology. Any newcomer had to obtain licence first and start production later, and any company which had an advantage in inovation only was pretty dead from the start. The incumbents always fought tooth and nail to keep things as they are, and since they had the support of the state they usually succeeded. In one extreme case this meant the execution of 16,000 small entrepreneurs whose only crime was importing or manufacturing cotton cloth in violation of French law. (last sentence is copy paste from Wikipedia).
Now, again, except the state control the economic climate looked surprisingly like today. Which is why there are still countries that proclaim to be capitalist, even when in practice it's impossible to build a successful business without political support. The difference is not semantic, it is very real.
Do you remember the recent case of the homeless shoe shiner who had to pay $400 for a licence? That would be the exception. In that time (and now in many countries), it was not only the rule, but the licence would cost you a lot more then one month's rent.
It's very nice to criticize a system because a worker in Bolivia has it rough. You feel very good when you say "Something must be done!", but if by any chance you'd get any power all you'd do with this attitude would be to destroy. The current system works. It puts bread on the table of that Bolivian worker, and on pretty much everybody else's. If you want to change this you _must_ start by understanding the current system and its strengths and weaknesses. To try and replace it, or change it without understanding it can only end in ruin.
And if you look closer at that specific worker you may find interesting things. You may find for example that the reason mining is the only thing he can do is not due to capitalism, but because some local politician decided (much like you) that capitalism is not the way to go. And that the evil foreigners who only want money must be kept far away, and let in only on a leash. So the greedy foreigners can't come to that part of Bolivia and build a car factory which makes cheap Fords and Fiats because well, nobody really wants capitalists to make more money of their backs. So the poor miner keeps on going down into the mine every day.
Free trade is good for poor people. Globalization is good for poor people. Capitalism is good for poor people. When you see them failing, there's usually some politician who thinks that if he controls every aspect of the economy that's still called capitalism.