Re:Stop comparing this to the 2000 bubble
by Apocryphon on Sunday November 03, 2013 @01:33PM
(#6664370)
You'd think that would be a capitalist incentive for corporations to act to better the living standards of the global poor, so they can become potential customers and consumers of their products.
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Re:Stop comparing this to the 2000 bubble
by adventured on Sunday November 03, 2013 @01:52PM
(#6664445)
There is. For example, the free market - to the extent it has been allowed to exist - has done a lot to move China forward in very short amount of time (and particularly given the disaster their country was coming out Mao's reign).
Several former Soviet countries that were exceptionally poor have made good progress after the fall of the USSR. Hong Kong was practically a banana republic at one time, and quantum leaped forward very fast courtesy of Capitalism. Singapore used to be an irrelevant back-water nation.
You'll find that in most of the worst countries today, there are structural impediments that make it nearly impossible for the free market to reach the poorest. Often it's extreme levels of corruption, backed with violence; other times it's very protracted regional warfare (eg in central Africa); and other times it's a mixture of cultural and bureaucratic as in parts of India.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/22/africas_for...