The rich are getting richer and the very poor are also doing better, but this is coming at the cost of the middle class in Western Europe and the US, where the average couple of working adults can no longer afford to buy a home and have to live with the fact that their jobs are significantly less stable compared to the past. Many are forced to work part time or take on gigs to make ends meet.
I could go on, but something's clearly rotten in the west.
“Well that’s a fairly narrow and bigoted way of looking at it. Look at how many people are benefiting from her blood and organs.”
It seemed to me that we have chosen to increase the cost of living by spreading ourselves out and requiring cars and making homes investments.
It's the average man's tried and true method of investing.
For you last point, the gig economy is partially filling that role for non-homeowners. You can drive around or deliver things almost as casually as doing home improvements. Not quite as easily, but the payoff more direct.
It's more that the counter-position broadly applied over the long run is untenable.
If you don't own the home you live in and/or the land it stands on then you are by definition renting that property. A portion of your labour is going straight to someone who owns at least one home and some land thus depending on how long this goes on for drives inequality.
It's not called “Rentier Capitalism” for nothing you know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rentier_capitalism
If people have a decent chance to own their own home and land it gives them an avenue to a better life, if they don't it doesn't.
Yes, home ownership provides a way for people to accumulate wealth that is tax advantaged by US government policy. But does it provide the same benefit in countries without that tax advantage? And is that advantage enough to offset the reduced labor mobility that home ownership brings[1].
[1]https://www.citylab.com/life/2013/05/link-betweeen-high-leve...
That's too counter-intuitive for me. I'd need a lot more than one article to change my mind on this.
All other things being equal, if you're paying down a mortgage rather than lining someone else's pocket that has to be a good thing for you. Because when you have the mortgage paid off you own a property.
Just because in some places (like parts of Europe) there are tenant councils and strong tenant rights which makes being a tenant less bad doesn't then make the reverse situation (working towards owning your own home) less good.
And just because there are negative externalities to homeownership in a certain job market says just as much about that particular job market as it does about homeownership.
Which got me to thinking, there is a lot of space, but it's privately owned. Heck, the first police groups north of the Mason-Dixon line were established explicitly to collect taxes for landowners. One of Trump's first big scary acts was to sell off thousands of acres of public lands to wealthy business partners. Yet in all the current talk of wealth redistribution, nobody includes land ownership, even though it has been the main measurement of wealth for as long as we've entertained civilization.
I can see his point. I agree with you about housing. But if we conclude that things are getting worse it is hard to gather hope. There has never been more affordable quality housing as today. Everything of concern is better from financing and construction to communication.
So why is affordability down in these regions? Because the powerful has convinced us that there can be no other way. And we are, just as Rosling didn't want us to be, ignorant enough to believe them.
This simply isn't true. Between 1900 and 1905, Sweden's infant mortality rate was merely 2.3 per 1,000 live births [1] which is basically the same as they currently report (2.6 per 1,000 [2]) according to the CIA world factbook. Compare that with Lesotho's rate of 46.1 per 1,000 [2] and it's plain to aee that comparison is completely unfounded. Today's poorest countries have rates in the 60-80 range despite the best efforts of the Western world to share the basic knowledge which caused such a precipitous decline in infant mortality post-1850 with those nations.
[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448444/
[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_...
You're mixing up maternal mortality (the mother dies) with infant mortality (the child dies).
It would be quite remarkable indeed if somehow medicine in Sweden today achieved a slightly worse infant mortality than at the beginning of the previous century.
Factfulness is available, for free, here: http://www.factfulness.science/
The late Dr. Rosling's website is fantastic and a good example of easy to use GUIs for data science. Play around with the data yourself here: https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$time$value=2018;;&ch...
Try taking the quiz here to see if you are smarter than a chimp: http://factfulnessquiz.com/
I'd encourage everyone to read Factfulness. It's fairly quick to churn through and very enlightening. The world really is getting better.
This is where you are probably wrong and which so often is used in the narrative of "things are getting better". You make an implicit assumption that this development will go on. It probably won't. The reason is climate change.
But as is the case with automation predictions and massive net job destruction, it hasn't happened yet. So it's possible we're wrong about such predictions. We've been wrong in the past about environmental doom and job loss.
Or maybe not this time, but we should keep that in mind and be a little bit skeptical about our current state of knowledge when predicting the future. It would be one thing if the trend was clearly toward things getting worse because of climate change. But it's not so far.
Someone tell Fiji, I'm sure they will be happy to hear that:
https://unfccc.int/news/how-fiji-is-impacted-by-climate-chan...
https://www.salon.com/2012/09/19/first_village_relocated_due...
Not all predictions are equal. We're a lot better at modelling things now than we ever have been in the past. That's not to say we're definitely right this time, but the probability that we actually are right is much higher than at any point in history.
Or not. After all populism and demagoguery is extremely powerful (see religions).
The reason isn't climate change.
The Central African Republic has just come out of a civil war. Of course things are going to improve rapidly, because that farmer that was in a refugee camp can now go home and grow enough to barely feed his family.
You can't extrapolate that out to the CAR overtaking first world countries in a generation simply because that farmer hasn't been educated to do the jobs that the economy would require, neither probably will his children.
That's before getting into things like infrastructure, rule of law, etc, etc, etc.
Edit: To clarify, I don't disagree that climate change will probably hurt the poorest countries disproportionately though.
The parents contention is that climate change will prevent these countries becoming first world/that it will interrupt their growth. I'm saying even without climate change they won't become first world. Certainly not on the timescale suggested. Now I agree, climate change won't help. But the reason CAR isn't (now or in 50 years) a first world country is not down to climate change, its because they don't have any of the myriad things needed to support that type of economy.
economists think in curves - starting from a low base it's very easy to improve fast, but the rate of improvement drops off as it nears the global average.
ecologists think in straight lines - the rate of improvement is x/year, so in 50 years the improvement will be 50x and they'll be richer than Sweden, who are only improving at (x/10)/year.
Climate change is going to cause hardship, and aren't people going to respond? People respond to changing conditions all the time. In responding to change won't that cause economic activity? Where I live there are many flood relief schemes that have an overall budget in the 100s of millions. Multiply that by all the schemes needed the world over and you have a lot of economic activity.
I know this is very close to the broken window fallacy but assuming that climate is a gradual process and not a cataclysmic one (and there's no evidence that it is) then mere capital will be deployed or destroyed and deployed. Humans can rebuild their capital. Sure, if it wasn't for climate change that capital would have been invested elsewhere but we're not talking about all capital everywhere. I think it extremely unlikely that the effects of climate change will put the breaks on human progress. However I do think it very possible that climate alarmists might cause policies to be put into place that would put the breaks on human progress.
It'd be nice if we could come back here in a generation, in 2050 say, and see what the near-term outcomes were.
This isn't surprising and the reasoning isn't that hard.
Economic advancement is very hard if you have to 'figure out how to do it' i.e. intensive R&D.
But if you are 'far behind' and there are examples to copy, you can just copy.
Developing nations not only have many examples, but they have access to capital, credit etc.. Many of them have natural resources to get things gong. As long as there is conscientious leadership - they can grow quickly.
There are examples of countries growing 'even more quickly' than such developing nations - and those are post-war nations. Nations that already have functioning institutions, when faced with a cataclysmic shock of war - don't need to build from scratch, rather, they are 'repairing' their economy.
Europe, S. Korea, Japan in the post-war years really boomed.
China, one might argue is not just 'developing' but it's 'snapping back' after a long period of oppression.
But once development reaches a certain level, it tends to slow, and come in line with the development of other advanced nations.
You can see this glowingly with Japan and S. Korea as they rockted forward, but are now in the slog with the rest of us.
When you have 'no roads' - investment decisions are easy.
But when everyone has 'stuff' ... well ... it's a lot harder.
Unless the exploitative nature of the relationships between wealthier and poorer countries changes, they will have a hard time reaching our economic standards.
You can't have 'not enough investment' and then 'debt trap' (i.e. taking on too much debt) at the same time.
Which is it?
They can't access debt?
Or they're taking on too much, so much they can't service it?
Countries usually wantonly and willingly approach the IMF/WB for loans - not the other way around. The reason is because they can get better terms than anyone else will provide. The IMF/WB are sources of capital wherein none else would even exist.
The IMF/WB are not really profit centers for anyone. If it were highly lucrative, then lenders would be lining up to put money into these amazingly profitable funds! But of course this is not the case.
The reason these countries end up with problems, is the same reason they are not able to 'catch up' to rich countries: they are dysfunctional, corrupt, lacking many of the institutions and systems necessary to make use of the money.
Corrupt leaders often take a hefty chunk off the top of the loan, hand out sub contracts to their idiot friends etc., and things fail or fall apart. And then the lender is blamed?
There's a lot of money floating out there and made available for rational infrastructure investment - on very good terms - it's just that the money often can't be turned around into some kind of productive gain. This should give a hint as to why the countries are poor in the first place.
Sure, there are cases where corrupt leaders have embezzled the funds. However, it was also a practice that governments be given funds only on condition of structuring their economies in ways that benefit western investors over the local population. So their "dysfunctionality" was not always a choice - not democratically anyway. There are also cases where corrupt leadership was put into power in developing countries by Western forces, after compromising democratically elected regimes, e.g. by the CIA in Panama, Chile, or Iran.
If former colonies had been offered the kinds of reparations and assistance that say the people founding the state of Israel got, then it seems reasonable to think that these places could be doing very well like Israel is doing now. But places like say Haiti were completely ruined with debt from damages they were forced to repay after their independence struggle, to make an example of them and discourage other liberation efforts. And they have never been given the chance to negotiate on equal terms since.
I think there is plenty of evidence for a story where there was an abuse of Western geopolitical influence in these places. There is lots of productive gain to be made in these places. It just happens to largely go to the West, rather than to the people living there. In Africa, on average, more money leaves the continent in the form of repatriation of profits by multinationals than was invested/lent that year [1]. So the modern version of colonialism is still an effective form of wealth extraction. This is not to mention the nasty tactics that such companies have been found to use in order to maintain this kind of profiteering, such as by funding rebel militias in civil wars to keep control of valuable resource extraction sites [2].
It's terrible how we are led to blame the people in these countries and resign them to what could be pretty horrible fates, when there are far more powerful and sinister actors that are on "our side" who are usually holding more of the blame.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/may/24/w...
The debt trap the IMF is holding these countries in is shocking and horrid.
Part of me wishes "Africa" would band together, give the IMF the middle finger and do their own thing / team up even more with the Chinese. At least then they'd have a fair start, rather than the IMF putting a foot on their heads.
Take a homeless person who has a penny to his name. You give him $100 and his wealth skyrockets by 1000000% in a day. Compare that to bill gates whose wealth probably increases by a "measly" 10% per year. But if you look at the wealth increase by absolute numbers rather than percentages, the picture is quite different. Bill Gates' 10% probably gets him $10 billion while the homeless man's 1000000% gets him $100.
$10 billion vs $100.
10% vs 1000000%.
Whereas the mainstream media may be too pessimistic, rosling is even more optimistic. The idea that the poorest countries ( like CAR ) is going to lead the world is unrealistic barring some apocalyptic event in the US, Europe, East Asia, Middle East.
I don't think that OP was arguing that will happen. He was just arguing that growth is happening and they are catching up.
That's not at all what I said.
What I meant was that Sweden (and every developed country) improved in one generation from where CAR is today to where Sweden is today.
CAR is currently improving faster than Sweden ever did, so it's probably that in one generation CAR will be where Sweden is today.
Of course, Sweden will probably improve in that same generation.
Yeah... that's not how it works.
Yesterday you had zero wifes. Today, on your wedding you have 1. Thus, just plotting the trend, tomorrow you have 2. You'll soon have dozens.
But Sweden, and every other developed country on the planet did it, so why do you assume that other countries can't or won't.
They're currently doing a faster job of improving than any other country ever did... yes, even the one YOU live in.
Let's put to one side the second part of the book which is some of the worst material Pinker has put down on paper – not in terms of style of course, he writes like an angel, but in terms of philosophical content.
What struck me about the first part was where he deals with inequality. It is demonstrably true using Pinker's own metrics and datasets that economic progress is not distributed evenly. To put it very simply the data shows that the middle class is becoming hollowed out in the developed world. Where is that wealth flowing to? The rich in the developed world and the poor in the developing world. The argument goes like this: because the number of very poor and poor that are being lifted out of poverty in the developing world outnumbers the middle class that are losing their wealth in the developed world, then the current system is great because smaller overall numbers are better. QED.
You can attack this position from two angles. First, as Jason Hickel does by saying that the way poverty has been and is being measured is broken in some way. Second, in a way that is more compelling which is this: that the global and regional and national growth in wealth ought to be more evenly distributed. The current distribution is fundamentally and deliberately skewed. That would be the tack I would take. I would say, why do there have to be losers?
And isn't this what Brexit in the UK, the Yellow Vests in France, and the election of Trump in the US demonstrate? It shows that many feel squeezed and left behind. This was the first time I felt like saying to Pinker, "Well, look at you, a successful author in a developed country – do you not care about how your average countryman is doing?" Extreme and rising inequality is bad in and of itself. We know this because historically and in the present day when societies are more equal the knock on effects are felt in every sector of society. There's a reason people point to the Nordic model, they're not pulling this stuff out of their butts you know.
To Hickel's argument I would say this. Pinker is correct that where one draws the line of absolute poverty is irrelevant because the data shows that no matter where one draws the line (at that level of things) the numbers show poverty (at the global level, for the poorest of the poor) is decreasing. I think Hickel is correct in pointing out that all rich countries have protected their economies and continue to protect their domestic economies, Hickel lists a number of authors who pointed this out to which I would add How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor by Erik S Reinert. But that doesn't refute the data, it just refutes Pinker's ideology.
People like Hickel are basically anti-capitalist which for me is a non-starter. I'm opened to being proved otherwise. Don't get me wrong: crony capitalism can be critiqued, as can the excesses of capitalism – but I think people like Hickel would criticise capitalism itself which as I say for me doesn't fly. On the other hand people like Pinker either don't see or choose to downplay the ills of neoliberal globalist unfettered capitalism.
What bugs me about Hickel's take is that it feels like he's suggesting we can either have capitalism or public education, that we can have capitalism or public health programs. And so on. I don't think Pinker would be against such systems. All the most successful nations show that capitalism and some socialist policy can work hand-in-hand very well indeed. This is the debate we need to have I think, and urgently before skyrocketing inequality leads to violent social unrest and God knows who'll get into power then and God knows what cuckoo ideology they'll have. The wealthy have rigged the system in their favour. By the wealthy I mean, wealthy individual humans and wealthy corporations. We've allowed it to happen and now it must be addressed.
People like Hickel are awful. They rail against everything, scream that we're destroying the Earth (hint: we're not), and their proposed solutions are either socialist programs mostly _everybody_ agrees with and are implemented in _most_ nations or anti-growth solutions which are in a word 'bonkers'. Be very suspicious of people who say we're doing nothing right and who have a fundamentally pessimist view about humanity's growth.
“Are You Ready To Consider That Capitalism Is The Real Problem?” https://www.fastcompany.com/40439316/are-you-ready-to-consid...
“Don’t Be Scared About The End Of Capitalism—Be Excited To Build What Comes Next” https://www.fastcompany.com/40454254/dont-be-scared-about-th...
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I have no time for ideologues (from whichever side of the aisle they come) who present capitalism and socialism as mutually exclusive alternatives to all sorts of problems real and imagined.
I think the man has correctly identified the flaws of capitalism and is rightfully asking why we can't fix some of those by changing capitalism.
Any political system can become harmful to individuals and society when pushed to its extremes, as it's happening now in western societies, but especially in the US.
PS: maybe whoever is downvoting all these comments can take a break and get some fresh air.
Thanks for saying that. I wish people would tell me what they take issue with so I could debate them.
Hickel has not correctly identified the flaws of capitalism. He has identified the flaws in human nature. Particularly greed and lack of empathy for others not in your situation. But we all know those anyway. What he's doing is blaming capitalism because that's an easy cheap shot that everyone agrees with. Distributing some of the profit of a company to the shareholders and bosses is not morally wrong. Doing so to the detriment of the workers is. If, as in the example in the article, JP Morgan and the general stock market dump on you for worker-friendly moves then double-down and let JP Morgan and general stock market dump on you. Ordinary people will respect you and choose to use your company. Change the culture.
And blaming the Grenfell Tower disaster in London on capitalism?! That's just naked greed, that's all that is – saving a few thousand for your pocket. May that decision forever weigh on their consciences. It's an insult to everyone who died in that fire to blame what happened on capitalism.
> Any political system can become harmful to individuals and society when pushed to its extremes, as it's happening now in western societies, but especially in the US.
Capitalism is an economic system, not a political system. Look, don't be hoodwinked by these people. They are ideologues. Why can't Hickel say that he's for curbing the excesses of capitalism? Because it doesn't tap into your lizard brain, it's not emotive enough. Read it again and see that Hickel never says that he's against the extremes of capitalism, he's against capitalism itself – ask yourself why that is … he's either an ideologue, a bad faith actor, or economically not at the races or a combo of all three. Even Piketty, who has written the most cogent critique of capitalism in many a year, doesn't push an essentially anti-capitalist position.
Why I really dislike people like Hickel is because we're never allowed to give ourselves some praise or credit for doing the right thing. Lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty? Sorry, gotta exclude China from my graph. Why? Because it looks too good and invalidates my argument. That's why Hickel pushes against Pinker, because Pinker had the audacity to point out that maybe we're doing something right. You didn't hear a peep from Hickel when Pinker was talking about rates of violence (though he got it in the neck from people like John Gray for other reasons) but when Pinker starts saying that some of our policies against poverty are working Hickel's right there waiting to rain on his parade.
Like I say, there are a couple of serious problems with Pinker's book but Hickel has not identified one of them.
> Capitalism and Public programs are in conflict because underlying public efforts is progressive taxation (aka Redistribution)
With respect, that sentence makes no sense. Progressive taxation (aka Redistribution, aka something I completely agree with) does not underlie public efforts. Taxation alone underlies all public efforts. Taxation comes in many stripes: regressive, flat, progressive. Progressive taxation makes sure the rich shoulder a fair portion of the tax burden rather then the less well off. Who tries to roll back progressive tax policies? The rich. Not all the rich are capitalists, many are but many by the same token are not. Many of the rich have wealth going back centuries to times which preceded capitalism. The wealthy, many of whom are capitalists, oppose progressive taxation. This does not imply that capitalism and progressive taxation are in conflict. Many people point to the post-war years in the US when progressive taxation was very, um, progressive and the economy was booming. As taxation has become less progressive over the years inequality has skyrocketed and investment in infrastructure has tanked which actually works against the interests of the capitalists. So, properly speaking capitalism and progressive taxation make great bedfellows, but the rich don't like it because they like all of us are self-interested and greedy.
Capitalism is a system of private ownership, voluntary transactions, and contract law. A Union violates the ability of the capitalist to engage in voluntary transactions. (Restricts who and at what price can be employed) Taxation violates the tenet of private ownership. ("taxation is theft" etc)
Why are all Public Efforts a form of redistribution? Cause if they were not then they would simply be a corporate effort. If you are just trading value for value there is no need for government. (Game theory aside) This is why in highly capitalist countries like the USA the medical system remains private.
"As taxation has become less progressive over the years inequality has skyrocketed and investment in infrastructure has tanked which actually works against the interests of the capitalists. So, properly speaking capitalism and progressive taxation make great bedfellows"
I dont mind arguments where one states that capitalism can be so self destructive that constraining its natural tendencies leads to higher economic output. BUT dont then confused this new tamed object with the original savage beast. It is a category error when you give someone a wolf for a pet when they asked for a dog. If you hear "dog" when someone else actually says and means "wolf" you will aid in a great deal of suffering.
I would also recommend reading something like "Capital" - by Thomas Piketty
I have a copy of it, understand the central thesis (r>g), agree with conclusion of the central thesis (inequality increases), and agree with the proposed counter-measures (progressive tax regimes, Tobin tax, …)
I don't believe that Capitalism creates r>g. I believe human greed creates r>g. So r>g leads to capitalism's excesses: I agree that capitalism in and of itself is merely the system of private ownership, voluntary transactions, and contract law …
I strongly strongly disagree that unions violate the ability of the capitalist to engage in voluntary transactions. I'd go further, anyone who makes a claim like that is either an apologist for the rich, or has no empathy for the working class, or is a doctrinaire "free-marketeer" (in short, an ideologue).
I strongly strongly disagree that taxation violates the tenet of private ownership. Again, I'd go further, anyone who makes a claim like that is either an apologist for the rich, or has no empathy for the working class, or is a doctrinaire "free-marketeer" (in short, an ideologue).
> Why are all Public Efforts a form of redistribution? Cause if they were not then they would simply be a corporate effort.
Ever wondered why city and county councils are sometimes called corporations or are said to be incorporated? I may be going out on a limb here but I doubt you did. There's no God-given rule that every single part of society must be privately run. No sane person actually believes that. Police? Emergency services? Army? (To name the obvious ones). What, wars outsourced to unaccountable mercenaries? Policing crime outsourced to the lowest bidder? Guess what, we used to have voluntary and competing fire services and they used to start fires to create work for themselves! Eventually people copped on and decided that they should be publicly funded.
> If you are just trading value for value there is no need for government. (Game theory aside)
Vacuous. Literally devoid of sense.
> This is why in highly capitalist countries like the USA the medical system remains private.
With how many uninsured. Roughly 30 million, isn't it? And how many needless deaths a year. I think the number is around 40,000? You're basically saying that you're okay with the status quo, a status quo which results in needless death. Luckily people with the extreme views that you have are outliers. Over 70% over people in the USA want Medicare for All. It's coming. It's happening and there's nothing people with the views you have can do about it. Here is Life Expectancy measured against Health Expenditure compared in the developed world: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Life_exp... That's the reality you're living in and want to continue to live in.
However this is almost wrong by definition "I strongly strongly disagree that unions violate the ability of the capitalist to engage in voluntary transactions" Perhaps your thinking of unions that dont have scab laws backing them?
I think worse still is this concept "I don't believe that Capitalism creates r>g. I believe human greed creates r>g. "
Greed is an individual choice and it has very little to do with the structure of capitalism. I think Marx even points to the lack of choice that the capitalist has in their pursuit of profit and the inevitable resulting exploitation. Charity in capitalism is like vegetarianism in Lions.
related is a doc on negative liberty: https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-trap/
> First Im Canadian and I like Canada.
You can't extol the virtues of the US healthcare system and then say you like Canada. That's contradictory. You can't say that you "like" Canada (a social democracy) but also say you admire the US healthcare system (non socialised healthcare). Make up your mind.
> However this is almost wrong by definition "I strongly strongly disagree that unions violate […]
No. That's not defining something, that's stating a belief. Your have opposing beliefs. Neither of us is wrong by definition. When you think about it, that's not how belief and ideology works. My point is though that the overwhelming majority of Canadians and Americans agree with my position even if that position is not reflected 100% of the time in the social policy of the day. We could be all wrong, but hey, you got to either convince us all (and you're not doing a good job of it) or hope that the powers that be prevail. And history tells us they won't
I know about negative and positive liberty, I studied philosophy.
I've also read Chomsky. He's a frickin' anarcho-syndicalist, he's on record as being an anarcho-syndicalist. A syndicalist is someone who believes in unions! How can you say your views are reflected best by someone like Chomsky and in the next breath decry unions.
Everyone is self-interested. That's as close to a law of human nature as any that you can get. Randian capitalism relies on the fact that people ought to only look out for themselves, and invariably do. Capitalism is a _system_, humans _animate it.
It's been great debating you, but please read over what I've written a couple of times before you reply to me. That might sound really condescending, but I don't mean it to be, I swear. I think we actually see eye-to-eye on a lot of things …
I am simply describing what the Capitalism means because you say Capitalism but really you mean like a super mixed economy.
Its sorta like the Communism. If a communist country decides to have markets and private property to create incentives then it really cant be said to be communist anymore. Private property is antithetical to Communism just as redistribution is antithetical to Capitalism.
Sorry, I misread you, I was projecting onto you. I stand by my other claims.
> I am simply describing what the Capitalism means because you say Capitalism but really you mean like a super mixed economy.
You're not describing what Capitalism means, you're describing what you _think_ it means. When I say Capitalism I mean Capitalism, if I wanted to say Mixed Market economy I'd say Mixed Market economy.
> Its sorta like the Communism.
Vacuous.
> If a communist country decides to have markets and private property to create incentives then it really cant be said to be communist anymore.
Never disagreed with this. Not that Communism was mentioned.
> Private property is antithetical to Communism
True claim, the hint is in the name.
> just as redistribution is antithetical to Capitalism.
False claim.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/04/13/its-free...
And to reiterate, neither are unions antithetical to Capitalism.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2014/9/1/6094051/three-sentences-no-one-...
[2] https://www.commdiginews.com/business-2/labor-day-are-unions...
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If your entire argument hinges around the assertion that once an entirely 100% pure Capitalist system (market economy w/ attendant private property rights and share-holding and dividends and profit taking, the whole nine yards) has any tweaking whatsoever it stops being a Capitalist system … giving you what Forbes says “[a] social democratic version of a market economy” … then I don't know what to say …
It's entirely correct to still classify a version of a market economy as a market economy. So long as the fundamentals and essentials are unchanged a thing remains itself, not to be trite but a blue house is still a house. To argue otherwise is unhelpful at best.
This was a bad analogy – a better one would be 'a houseboat is still a house (and a boat)' (two things coming together and still being identified with each rather than something modifying another thing) – in coding terms: multiple inheritance versus single inheritance plus an interface?
Anyway I do think there is more going on here than a mere semantic disagreement about a word. However I dont think it can really be covered in a casual HN post.
I would say I did find that one article quite amusing. "And Smith is right in that pretty much nowhere has ever managed to limb up out of peasant destitution without the use of a market economy and the associated price system. "
The USSR used central planning (Gosplan) to manage their economy. They were the first space fairing nation on earth. What kind of author is this author to make these claims in direct contradiction to the historical record.
For example: we've known this since biblical times. Money is not the root of all evil, the love of money is.
Money is not evil in and of itself. Money is a tool. Like a hammer, money can be wielded in bad ways or good. You can build a house or bash someone's skull in. Because you can bash someone's head in with a hammer does that make hammers bad?
Private property and private property rights protect what people have worked for but if someone or some entity accumulates too much wealth and assets and capital at the expense of others then that's a very real problem.
Making a profit is not evil in and of itself; lowering your worker's wages or keeping them low (as inflation inflates away their earning power) to increase your bottom line is evil.
Now, some could argue that this is essential to capitalism, that it'll always be abused. But, one could say that of any system. I think people are coming to realise that capitalism must be strictly regulated in order for it to function well and that is not the same as criticizing capitalism itself. For these reasons those who rail against capitalism itself I have no time for.
But even with millions at their disposal there doesn't appear to be any moral fiber on parting with their money, trusting the government or not, private individuals deeming who is worthy of their charity is not the type of society to strive for. If man can't be trusted with greed then how can we trust the philanthropy of a few high profile individuals to distribute wealth.
Free market types who are anti government intervention and regulation are ideologues and I have no time for ideologues. I have no time for the rabid pro-capitalists, but neither do I have any time for the rabid anti-capitalist. Both are blinded by ideology. They are the enemy.
Enlightened philanthropy is a great thing. But I totally agree with you, I sure as hell wouldn't want to run all public services using that model.
You are extrapolating the current rate, but doing that is dangerous:
China and India can pour all the money they want into various countries' infrastructure, it can all come tumbling down with the next disputed election or sectarian genocide.
It’s not that the Europeans are uniquely horrible people, only that the current era of peace and cooperation in the west is a historical aberration.
> can all come tumbling down with the next disputed election or sectarian genocide.
Will it though? I mean sure it might look like that, but the US just had a Gov shutdown, whereas India and China had none in the previous decades. [Even if the US system is better IMHO.] (Of course there is an index for that: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/India/wb_political_stabilit... and let's say vs Syria https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Syria/wb_political_stabilit... )
This is a very simplistic extrapolation. There are significant factors, primarily social/cultural ones, that will halt the relative development of those countries, sooner or later.
Hans addresses this in the book, actually.
What you said has no basis in fact, and makes no sense. Do you think people said exactly the same thing about Sweden a generation ago? Why / why not?
We in the West have this completely-made-up assumption that "they" can't develop like "we" did, with absolutely no grounding in fact.
Some people do, that's true. It also seems to be true that some people have an assumption, not at all completely grounded in fact, that "all" people can and will develop "like we did". Two problems I see with this belief are that it is inherently speculative (a prediction of the future), and it assumes that other cultures Necessarily* _want_ to develop like we have. Personally, I believe there are significant imperfections in Western culture, the way we've developed and the way we operate today, I'd be extremely surprised if all cultures view our way as the best way to organize societies. You can see evidence of this all over the place, but Westerners have a habit of classifying dissenting opinions as "just wrong" and dismissing/ignoring them.
Fully agreed. This is also extremely prevalent in any economic discussions here in HN where most of the first-world dwellers are cozying up their minds with the generic statement "it is all getting better on average" which I think is utter BS.
As a guy who has been to pretty poor parts of the world and lives in a country that touts any small bill that will benefit zero common folk -- but is always advertised as such for 30 years now -- I have to say, most first-world population is tragically misinformed on how are the average people around the world living.
They can. But "we" developed in a very turbulent and deadly ways. Just handful of decades ago, during WWI and WWII, "we" were killing millions of people, helping spread massive disease outbreaks that killed other millions in just a few years, created economy destroying monetary and isolationist policies, impoverished millions, destroyed advanced industrialized countries in the middle of Europe with communism, were colonizing, destabilizing and exploiting natural resources of other countries, etc.
We're still humans, and all this is still possible to repeat. And developing "like we did", is not necessarily something great or positive. It can mean pretty much anything, unless you cherry-pick baselessly.
The takeaway was that the Middle East today is about where the west was in the 60s.
That would seem to go quite well with OPs point that they are about “one lifetime” behind the west, specifically on the social/cultural values you mention.
It was mostly talking about the amount per day needed to have proper nutrition. Why do you shift the goalposts to abstract terms like "it's improving faster"? Sure, if you are on the rock bottom, it's only up from there on, and obviously you want to go faster when distancing yourself from the bottom.
Zero relevance to the article.
You can't extrapolation the future from current trends. There are discontinuities and challenges that can change the dynamics.
Pinker actually addressed this, but unfortunately I can't remember in which book/lecture/talk/article. Largely paraphrasing he said that we have to work for the gains, but that doesn't mean we can't have a positive attitude about these processes. (Such as comparative advantage resulting in trade resulting in cooperation and some degree of altruism - or we can just call it "counterparty risk management", or simply looking out for your buyers and suppliers.)
Current institutions as a vague continuity or the same?
Because if Pinker and other try to argue that current institutions have been historically enough, we just continue growth, they are very much wrong.
Benefits from innovations and growth have been accompanied with massive institutional changes in every 30 years or so. The current era is becoming an exception where institutions are becoming stale after 40-50 years of the same. That threatens continuity because institutions have to change in response to the change in the environment or they collapse.
Yes, you can.
We are learning and adapting our civilizations, and by most measures, it looks like we are 'getting better'.
If we continue along this path, things will likely improve.
Nobody is suggesting that there cannot be alternate dynamics. We all face the risk of war, famine, climate change etc.
That's interesting, because the book does not contain any arguments.
It contains facts. Hard numbers gathered over generations.
It's not a discussion or an argument, it's simply facts about the state of the world.
That's correct - countries like Lesotho and Central African Republic are improving faster than his home country of Sweden ever did, at any time. In only his lifetime Sweden went from having an infant mortality rate similar to that of the poorest countries today, to being one of the world leaders. Those poor countries are improving faster than Sweden ever did... so in just one more lifetime they'll be where the world leaders are today.
The book makes it plainly clear that the world is improving much, much, much faster - even for the poorest - than the mainstream media would have anyone believe.
[1] https://amzn.to/2Ihb6jM - full title is great "Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think"