
The Myth That Capitalism Saved the World - idl3Y
https://eand.co/the-myth-that-capitalism-saved-the-world-f655e2b529b1
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hashberry
> So why do American thinkers keep pushing the tired, old, obviously by now
> false myth that capitalism equals progress?

Because capitalism requires productivity from its citizens, and the market
organizes this labor in an efficient manner, which is why our grocery stores
are always filled with food & toiletries.

American democracy is the result of the British Parliament's misuse of
capitalism ("no taxation without representation"). Capitalism is not static
and is always correcting and improving itself with the help of pro-capital
governments, like women's suffrage and child labor protection laws.

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ralusek
The author says something that I think actually illustrates the main issue I
would take with their argument:

> capitalism alone can’t be the engine of human progress

For one, very few people claim that capitalism _alone_ is the solution to
human progress. That being said, it very much _is_ the engine. We don't know
of a better engine than capitalism, it creates value at unprecedented rates.
That doesn't mean that you can't steer its output towards objectives that
benefit society in ways that markets are unlikely to address in a timely
fashion.

Take Norway. It has a trillion dollar fund, started from selling oil, now
continuing to make money by investing in foreign companies. In addition to
this, they have a market economy. Because they have so many socialized
programs, the implication seems to be that this is not a capitalist country,
but this is simply not true. Capitalism, again, is the engine.

Because a state with taxpayer funding produced a notable step forward for
humanity does not mean that capitalism had nothing to do with this, it means
that capitalism produced the taxpayer funding.

~~~
JohnFen
> very few people claim that capitalism alone is the solution to human
> progress.

I see people claiming that all the time.

~~~
anm89
Capitalism is simply a combination of the existence of property rights, money,
and the right to freely enter into contracts except when prohibited by law.

How could this ever solve anything? It's not a solution, it's a framework.

It's like saying that Ruby on Rails is the solution to your company. We'll by
definition it can't be. It can be used to do whatever your company needs but
the framework can't be the company as it doesn't do anything useful in a
vacuum.

However it's certainly a much better model than generating an HTTP stack in
assembly to make your SAAS business. It solves a real problem that allows you
to operate but it doesn't solve your higher level problem.

Capitalism is exactly the same. The lack of it can cause major problems. The
existence of it cannot solve many problems but it can provide the only
efficient framework in which many problems can be solved.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Rodney Stark says that the distinguishing mark of capitalism is that (at least
part of) the profits are re-invested in better tools for productivity gains.
In this view, "the existence of property rights, money, and the right to
freely enter into contracts except when prohibited by law" are prerequisites,
but they aren't _capitalism_. Capitalism is what you do once you have that
foundation in place.

~~~
anm89
From wikipedia: "Rodney William Stark is an American sociologist of religion".

Whoever this guy is, he doesn't matter enough to get to redefine capitalism.
Being in the general field of economics would be a start.

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CryptoPunk
This is extremely ignorant of economics. The innovations and institutions he
refers to, like the university, were only made possible by rising levels of
productivity allowing more resources to be spent on specialized endeavors.

In the developing world, whether it's the US in 1880 or Guyana in 2019, rising
productivity means people able to afford more capital and consumer goods, like
insulated walls, menstrual pads, diapers and toilet paper, which collectively
make an enormous impact on human health.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
That entirely misses that the first universities were _centuries_ before the
first joint stock company, or consumer goods. There's a few pushing near 1,000
years old, though by the 12th century they were starting to spread across
Europe. The innovation and productivity gains came after.

~~~
mlyle
Yah, and could subsistence farming pay for nearly as much of the population to
be resident in them? Economic development is important-- we have a greater
portion of the population as academics and/or doing R&D than we had centuries
ago.

And it continues...

Total R&D population is up about 60% in the United States in the past 25
years, in a time when the population as a whole has increased by less than
20%.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
But universities were not _made possible_ by rising levels of productivity, as
the GP claimed. They were there long, long before.

Certainly a greater proportion go to university now than used to. Which came
after.

Current levels of university attendance are far more down to pushing
university as the right tertiary education, in place of apprenticeships;
technical and vocational. Many governments have made policy to increase
university attendance whilst closing or downplaying those other options.

~~~
mlyle
I'm not talking about undergraduate university attendance, but the number of
people employed in research. When we focus on higher institutions of research,
it's what the author of the article was talking about, too.

The number of people in that category was miniscule before 1700, and has
exploded in the past 300 years.

Yes, there were (a comparatively small number of) universities before this
time, doing qualitatively different things. But capitalism paid the bills to
transform them into institutions driving scientific advancement.

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brodouevencode
The author surfaces from time to time, and usually it revolves around his
perceived failures of capitalism. I've responded before here:
[https://www.brodoyouevencode.com/post/the-goal-of-
capitalism...](https://www.brodoyouevencode.com/post/the-goal-of-capitalism-
is-not-to-escape-capitalism/)

None of his arguments are appealing or interesting.

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woodandsteel
The author is correct that capitalism has brought lots of suffering. He is
also correct that progress requires much more in society than capitalism
alone.

However, it is definitely the case that the enormous technological advances we
have seen in the last few centuries could not have happened without
capitalism. The proof is that socialist countries, in spite of enormous
investment in technology and science, have failed to produce any significant
technological advances outside the military and space exploration realms. In
the few cases where someone in a socialist country invented something
important, like continuous casting or the cat scan, it languished until it was
taken up by capitalist countries.

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foobar_
It's easy to point out the faults of the communists. Are colonialism, ponzi
schemes, sweatshops, pharma human experiments and environmental disasters
capitalism's dark underbelly?

Everyone seems to think their ism is the best while conveniently ignoring ills
in the past.

~~~
chongli
Colonialism is much older than capitalism, so no. The Romans practiced it, as
did medieval kings.

Colonialism is a crime of opportunity. You see it whenever your group has
relatively advanced technology in terms of navigation, transportation,
logistics, governance, and military.

Humans aren’t innately ethical. We’ve had to develop ethics through a long
process of philosophical debate, with many setbacks and oversights. I think
we’re doing alright.

