
It's Not Capitalism That Causes Poverty, It's the Lack of It - ph0rque
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/12/19/its-not-capitalism-that-causes-poverty-its-the-lack-of-it/
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mempko
"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.

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transfire
What a load of justifiabullshit.

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intopieces
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?

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amai
"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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model)

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

Oh.

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pen2l
We can do better. My favorite Forbes article is this:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/09/17/give-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/09/17/give-
back-yes-its-time-for-the-99-to-give-back-to-the-1/)

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davesque
Forbes is now blocking people with AdBlock?

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nopreserveroot
Yep. This works though:
[https://github.com/Mechazawa/FuckFuckAdblock](https://github.com/Mechazawa/FuckFuckAdblock)

~~~
davesque
Not working for me.

 _Update_ : My bad. Working fine.

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

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joelbm24
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.

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1812Overture
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.

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mcv
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.

