"So, its ok for me to start a thread titled "Vitriola is a f*king moron.
I don't necessarily think this, but let's discuss"? Would that be OK,
since as you said I just want to know the opinion of others, and its
all in the title of the thread."

If you omit the "I don't necessarily think this" part, that thread has made the rounds several times already.  Gotta love the community part of downfall.  Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy!  :)

I started studying philosophy when I was in college in the mid 70s.  You make a big deal of 4 years.  If it is a big deal then I have more.  If it is not, then why mention it?  Personally, I think that it is the idea that it is the validity of the ideas that matters most. 

Yes, I used a search engine.  Ask.com, fwiw.  This is not because I was doing it "cliff notes" fashion.  It was because I did not know what you had access to.  I wanted to make simple points to justify my asking questions.  A philosophy student should not mind questions.  I wanted to show that my questions were honest and based on notions that others held and, therefore, non beligerent.  Quoting them was nothing more than me trying to make things easier for you.

You say, "The reason I'm not sourcing every single one of my thoughts is because
I have the firsthand educational background to confidently say what is
fact and what is not fact on the matter."  And yet, you made significant points on "C"apitalism that you later admitted were your own notions.  That is fine but personal opinion is not quite the same and it behooves the one with the unique opinion to justify it or expect others to give it a pass.  If you alone think something, how will anyone else give it credence if you do not explain it?

Also, you did not say which of the bits I mentioned about Adam Smith were under dispute.  If they are uncontested, then so is my assertion.

Lets try to relax.  This is a quest for knowledge and not a brawl.  If you do not want anyone to ask why you think what you tell them you do, just say so.  If you had just said "this one sucks and that one blows but is better than the other, period" we could have left it at that.  As Garreth said, it was a good read.  Can we keep it that way?

Sort of repeating what Kwon said but as Adam Smith believed, Capitalism should be Laissez-faire. Translated this means that economic markets should be completely absent of government intervention at all as the market will always fix itself.

After it was published it remained to hold true for a longest time. When talking about economics and especially laissez-faire economics it is generally referred to as the classical economic model.

There are some inherint flaws with this form of economic model however and they are as follows.

1. Everyone acts rationally with for the purpose of buying and selling goods. Everyone will always try to always try to sell at the highest price possible for them as the producer and the consumer will in turn try to buy at the lowest price possible to them. And thus the two will come to equilibrium where the producer is maximizing his profits on a given item.

While sounding great the problem with it is the fact that it assumes that everyone in the market operates with equal knowledge all the time which our markets just down afford. It means that Kwon, Garreth, You and I can all go into a store to buy and item and know everything about the product just as the guy selling it to us. Then after that we all decide how valuable this is for us.

While it sounds great in practice it doesn't work this way as information tends to be more asymetrical than symetrical.

2. The market will always fix it's own problems and thus should be left alone by the government so that profits can be maximized. The best example on why this doesn't work obviously is the Great Depression. Given enough time yes the market will fix itself howeverit fixes itself over a long term curve. John Maynard Keynes (here out referred to as the Keynsian model of Economics) however said "The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead."

While harsh, Keynes is unfortunately often right in this instance. As markets prefer to change slowly over time as it tends to keep the price of inflation down which means that the value of your real money tends to go up relatively equally to your profits.

While that is all well and good, unfortunately if you believe as Keynes does that in the long run we are all dead, then Classical is a 'flawed' economic model. What's more, human beings have emotions, feelings, 'free will' and other things which through kogs into the work. This is why Kwon talked about Capitalism would be great if we were all robots. These very emotions that we have cause problems in the market as it causes our behaviors to act abnormal compared to the markets themselves. Add to that, we all want to look out for ourselves and our families.

Again we will go back to the Great Depression (GD) where we had people loosing jobs, homes, life savings left right and center. Thus the government instituted policies to try to help the market recover faster. Things many of us still talk about today when we talk about all the extra 'fat' in our beauracracy stems from this area. But to go along with this we have things like Social Security which taking away would now cause a riot on Washington.

The other problem is just government in general which of course seeks to govern. However people tend to only stay with governments when in general they think that the government is somehow making their life better as a whole for its population.  They do this if for no other reason than for self-preservation, in this case preservation of their job.

Thus as time goes on as a majority of people want something done by the government that cannot be done by the people themselves they turn to the government. The government stepping in, not only in the economy but in any other place is mere a method of socialism.

TL;DR Summary: The government will institute socialistic options that a majority of the population have a weight behind (usually for an extended amount of time) in an effort of self preservation. And what's more capitalism will not save us because of human nature and emotions that will prevent it.