>>25
Well, from what I've seen, it's absolutely true. They are raging against "the Machine". In the more Socialist circles, "the Machine" means those evil capitalists and corporations making a profit and holding down the little people. If not for the Evil Capitalist, life would be perfect and we'd dance to folk music and do nothing but make folk art all day. Not a care in the world.
And for Libertarians, "the Machine" is the government. Oh, if only there was no government, the invisible hand of the market would take care of everything and we'll spend our days doing whatever we want, and people will always be able to work hard and make enough money to get whatever they want.
And in most cases, the people who advocate for the political extremes are high school and college students who have absolutely NO contact with the economy other than a part time job. Mommy and Daddy still take care of Louie the Libertarian and Stan the Socialist. This isn't based on reality, it's a form of mental masterbation. You get to pretend to be informed and challenge the system (girls like a strong independent thinker), yet you know deep down that the system you propose has absolutely no chance on actually existing.
Neither one of them works in the real world. The closest we have to a libertarian economy are places in Central and South America with relatively weak governments. What seems to happen is that you have no middle class -- there are the very rich and the very poor and few in the middle.
In socialist countries, you kill off most innovation. Name three major inventions coming from Sweden (widely reguarded as Socialist Utopia). You won't be able to, because without the profit motive, no one will bother to invent or improve anything.
Both systems, in their pure form will destroy a society. In pure capitalism, it's a fairly medieval system with a large wealthy "lord" class surrounded by poorly educated peasents. On the socialist side you get stagnant societies where the worst thing you can do is rock the boat.
The best solution seems to be balancing the two against each other, so that the free market does what it does best, and the government provides reasonable protection against the excesses of capitalism. It takes negotiation and hard work to figure out what the best mix is, but it can be done.