I think the rebuttal to rms' comment that "Capitalism has this nasty little problem of all the wealth getting concentrated in the hands of the few" is very simply this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_sum_fallacy
While some kinds of wealth are limited, it's generally not a zero sum game.
Startups are all about capitalism though aren't they. They are capitalism in action.
I just can't get past this feeling that there's something horribly wrong with our society... from pharmaceutical companies keeping AIDS medication locked away to an invasion of the Middle East to take their energy. This can all be explained through rational self-interest but it's pretty horrific to contemplate. Is there a better way? Will we ever achieve real Globalization?
Can and will global poverty be solved before humanity achieves a post-scarcity economy?
They live in poverty because of a lack of capitalism, not because of capitalism. You might find this hard to believe but every poor country has a lack of capitalism. Check here: http://www.heritage.org/index/countries.cfm there's not a single contradiction.
If you really care about the poor I challenge you to take a few hours to read this PDF just to hear the other side of the argument: http://www.mises.org/books/conquest.pdf
Feel free to email me at lockster 4T gmail d0t com if you feel like a friendly debate ;)
Some other discussion of options here:
http://gojomo.blogspot.com/2005/03/cross-browser-invisible-word-break-in.html
http://tinyurl.com/2gd7ue
http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/6/64/375px-Index2006_EFCapita.gif
Also the gap between rich and poor has been essentially static for the past 50 years, and shrinking since the 80s http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2005/12/images/walton3.gif
http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=pb&id=859
Yet more proof is in the Economic Freedom index. All rich countries have free economies, and all poor countries have un-free economies: http://www.heritage.org/index/countries.cfm for me that's the smoking gun that capitalism works.
http://web.archive.org/web/20060111094731/truckandbarter.com/tb_images/ef_in.gif
"Unfortunately, no one's figured out a better way of distributing wealth."
There are only 2 choices in economics: Capitalism, which is really just people trading freely (and seems to distribute the wealth the best) and communism/socialism, which doesn't allow anybody to trade (and has the worst distribution of wealth). The only other options are systems which are somewhere between, and evidence (from the Economic Freedom index) shows the freer the economy the better off everyone is.
Further China isn't particularly capitalist, it's still very heavily socialist: http://www.heritage.org/index/country.cfm?id=China (although that's changing year by year). So if people are starving in China it's not really capitalism's fault.
It's also a myth that capitalism causes starvation. In fact there were no famines in the 20th century in any capitalist countries. All the famines were related to Marxism (China, Russia, Ethopia, North Korea etc.)
(This has an indepth look at famines through the ages: http://www.mises.org/books/conquest.pdf)