Opinion: One world economy

Becoming upset that Zohran Mamdani has been elected Mayor of New York City seems to me to be a waste of emotion. For decades, most economists have agreed that there is really only one world economy, and that is capitalism. Not pure capitalism, but rather economic systems that are based on overriding capitalistic principles.

When comparing today’s global economies, it appears that there are no “pure” systems, but rather capitalist systems with lesser or greater touches of socialism. Moreover, that has always been the case except for very small and isolated attempts at creating socialist utopias. Most of them, of course, did not last more than a few decades.

Kaweah

Of the many attempts to create a utopian socialist community that occurred between about the mid-nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, one that featured nearly “pure” socialism, was formed near Madera. In 1885, Burnette G. Haskell, a west-coast labor leader, led a group which filed a claim on timber land near Visalia. Initially, he and his followers built a camp in the area that is now Three Rivers.