Excellent commentary!

>>Blair has a very interesting Blog. Check it out if you have some time.

Long answer:
Some Americans want the control, and think that they can have both control and prosperity (e.g. they believe that socialism will work in America, or will work only after a capitalist system generates enough prosperity to make it seem to work), but this is an impossibility, because socialism deters hard work, and encourages each worker to expect the government to give him his prosperity. From each according to his ability (or willingness to work harder than the next guy); to each according to his need (and the left over productivity goes to the leadership). This is the lesson of the Pilgrims at the Plymouth Colony. They proved that socialism does not work, even in America, but that capitalism does. Their survival and prosperity under the capitalist system, after nearly half of them perished under Bradford’s socialist experiment, was the real reason for the first Thanksgiving.

The problem is that many people are not learning the lesson of Bradford’s Plymouth Colony.

Capitalism encourages hard work, ingenuity, and talent and requires that each worker make someone else a little more prosperous in order to become a little more prosperous himself. It is better for 300 million people to figure out how they each can make a little more prosperity for someone else than it is for a few central controllers to figure it out. The individuals are motivated and can rapidly adapt, while central controllers make sure that they prosper whether or not they succeed, and it takes months for them to get reports as to how well their efforts work (notice the US government’s various reports, such as employment; how they come out a month or two after the data is collected and how they are adjusted over time, to boot!).