It's Not Capitalism That Causes Poverty, It's the Lack of It | Hacker News Reader

It's Not Capitalism That Causes Poverty, It's the Lack of It

forbes.com

30 pointsph0rque15 comments

"We must go and exploit them as the ruthless, red in tooth and claw, capitalists and free marketeers that we are. Simply because it is the absence of capitalism and markets that allows poverty, their presence that defeats it."

I believe the same argument was made for black slavery.

That black slaves were better off than their African counterparts, therefore slavery is good.

Same logic, different time.

What a load of justifiabullshit.

Is this article missing a page? It ends without saying anything. It appears to be built around a single fact and extending that fact outward without examining its implications or methods of implementation: that is, just because capitalism doesn't currently exploit the third world in a negative sense says nothing about the potentiality for it to. Instead, the article seems to use this one data point as a smug shield against criticism. A more robust and therefore interesting article would have taken the criticisms (the ways in which capitalism is said to exploit the poor) point by point and explain how it would ultimately be avoided in even a baseline, pragmatic capitalist influence on struggling third world economies.

This article convinces no one and only makes already in-the-tank capitalist apologists feel validated. Is there a word for that?

"In 2013, The Economist described its countries as "stout free-traders who resist the temptation to intervene even to protect iconic companies" while also looking for ways to temper capitalism's harsher effects, and declared that the Nordic countries "are probably the best-governed in the world":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

... by providing capital to the poor? Right? That's what this article is about, right? Right?

Oh.

We can do better. My favorite Forbes article is this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/09/17/give-...

Forbes is now blocking people with AdBlock?

Yep. This works though: https://github.com/Mechazawa/FuckFuckAdblock

Not working for me.

Update: My bad. Working fine.

use something else than adblock. simple.

Right, because if you have more capitalism, the poor just die off like they're supposed to. The system works!

every economy is capitalistic, in that the goal is to produce capital, who owns that capital is where the differentiation lies, in a purely socialist society the government would own it, in a free market society those that produced it would own it and trade it with whomever they saw fit. free being defined as the absence of coercion. a poor person is by definition someone without capital. so if when looking at reasons why that person isn't getting capital through trade or by creating it, one needs to look at the coercive forces preventing them from obtaining it and seeing how in poor countries and even in western countries the most coercive force is the government one could draw the conclusion that the government is causing poverty by preventing people from creating and trading capital in ways that they themselves see fit. to gain any kinda of capital through trade in a free market society one has to convince people that what they have is worth trading, thus any profits are earned through both parties own volition. it's this voluntary relationship that is at the heart of the free market and progress, when you have entities such as the government or institutions that use the coercive nature of the government that's when this system breaks down.

In a purely "socialist" society the people who produce the capital (the workers) would own it, in a purely "free market" the capital is owned by a "capitalist class" who own the products of their laborers efforts.

I'm generally a free market guy, but words mean stuff. No purely free market or purely socialist system has ever or will ever exist.

And rightly so. Either taken to the extreme leads to terrible situations. But balance the best parts of both socialism and capitalism, and you get something really nice. That's pretty much what the Nordic countries are doing, and it seems to be working very well.

socialism doesnt allow for private ownership anything, everything is "public" or controlled by the governing class. a person owning what they produce ie private ownership of capital is a key part of of the free market. also that "capitalist class" you describe literally is what the government does in socialist or communist societies, and other governments do to a lesser degree in many western societies through taxes. in that the capital that was produced by an individual is taken by force for what the government deems most useful. I mean a free market is literally people voluntarily trading goods and services. so a "worker" would be defined as someone voluntarily trading a service for the means o aquire a good or service. now I dont argue for some anarcho capitalist society, but when you look at societies where the government had few responsibilities, those being defined as protecting citizens and resolving disputes because not everyone is going to play nice so taking taxes for those few things I can see as being justified. those societies that have a small government gain higher standards of living within a few generations. if an individual takes the services of another without voluntary cooperation which you defined as a "capitalist class", can only arise if that individual uses governments power to stamp out competition through taxes and laws, being for a free market does not mean being pro corporatism. ive heard people use the term crony capitalism or crapitalism for that. it seems you are caught up in labels and intents and not looking at the actual system or efficacy.

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