> I'd like to argue just the opposite: a thriving
> capitalist society requires independent and innovative
> thought and action.
Capitalism is not healthy in our day. It runs on simulated growth (example from this week's _Economist_: "Waking from the dreamy 1990s, investors discovered that G[eneral] E[lectric] was not, after all, a smooth earnings machine that pumped out profit growth of 16-18% a year, but a collection of mature industrial assets bolted to a fast-growing, opaque, and highly leveraged finance business.").
Obviously, such a situation requires skillsets very different from those deployed by the ascending bourgeoisie in the 17th century. In the above, the _Economist_ indicates that "dreamyness" is the skill to have while the bubble builds, for instance.
cheers AN