3 ms·

I think this is right in the sense that, people struggling to survive are offered no choice but to play by the rules of a system that otherwise leaves them to d

I think this is right in the sense that, people struggling to survive are offered no choice but to play by the rules of a system that otherwise leaves them to die. It's frying pan or fire, so of course they have to be capitalists. Over the first two centuries of industrial revolution, lifting the bottom ~billion out of drought, malnutrition and early death has never been pursued for its own sake or incentivized in its own right. But it has sometimes been a fortunate, peripheral outcome of working within systems structured first and foremost by the flow of capital, as you correctly note with the example of India's relatively recent economic liberalization.

nine_k 8y ago
There's a simple problem: if you're the top dog and desperately need to keep your population fed, you have to have the food to do that. But if your society is structured so that it cannot efficiently produce enough food, or other goods, you're unable to do that, no matter how good your intentions are. It was exactly the problem that killed Soviet Union: by winter of 1985, there was not enough food to even distribute via the then-imposed food stamp system. This led to a change of course that ultimately ended up with the dissolution of USSR and a new rise of the capitalist Russia.
onetimemanytime 8y ago
>> I think this is right in the sense that, people struggling to survive are offered no choice but to play by the rules of a system that otherwise leaves them to die. It's frying pan or fire, so of course they have to be capitalists. so find a better system. What has worked so far, in practice?