There are a lot of problems with free market capitalism. One important one is that, while living standards have skyrocketed in the developing world, in recent d

There are a lot of problems with free market capitalism. One important one is that, while living standards have skyrocketed in the developing world, in recent decades they have stagnated or declined in the developed world. Another is that the rich have a highly disproportionate influence on the political system. A third is crashes caused by the finance industry, as in our recent Great Recession. That said, I think the overall message has a lot of truth. The reason this is so is that industrialization produces vast, orders-of-magnitude increases in the total wealth of a society, and free market regimes, over the long term, are better than any other at both producing the technological innovation involved, and also putting it into efficient use. That is why the Soviet Union and Mao's China both stalled out in economic growth. It is also why crony capitalism economies, where the road to wealth is based on governmental connections, as in Putin's Russia and the whole Arab Middle East, don't have successful economies. That in turn ties to democracy. If you have an authoritarian regime, then probably it is going to try to enrich its members and control the economy for its own benefit, rather than that of its citizens. With a democracy it is much more likely the market will be free enough to have real, sustained growth.