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> IMO globalist capitalism has increased living standards for the poorest people in countries that were well-run enough to take advantage of it, China in partic
by harrumph 8y ago
> IMO globalist capitalism has increased living standards for the poorest people in countries that were well-run enough to take advantage of it, China in particular.
But China is not a market economy and as such can't be described simply as an outpost of global capitalism. It has an aggressive, state-led industrial policy, it regulates the shit out of what it does, and it exercises enormous amounts of trade protections. It is a state that admits and fosters economic liberalism in areas, but is in no way a market economy otherwise.
Pinker and Gates are here to tell us that neoliberal markets are what eradicate poverty when a) historically the reverse is true -- poverty has been exacerbated by colonialism wrought by neoliberals b) the example they keep harping on -- China -- isn't even an example of a market economy.
IMO this world is in fact getting worse for most persons living here, and there is no doubt that mouthpieces for the status quo are invested to deny this in the language Pinker et. al, use. These denials are ahistorical horseshit and will be viewed on par with trepanation and eugenics, all the more with every inch of sea level rise.
- jhbadger 8y agoModern China is definitely a "market economy" in every meaningful sense of the term. Unlike in Maoist times, there is no central planning committee deciding what should be manufactured and sold and private businesses make their own decision based on what they think will sell. Is there government intervention in the Chinese market? Of course, but that's true of every country -- even the US. The completely free market is just a theoretical concept never practiced anywhere at any time.
- harrumph 8y agoThey build cities...using their army. Your description of the country's general economic characteristics is off-the-charts wrong, and is especially wrong concerning the area where Pinker pretends that liberalized markets are why poverty in China has been in sharp decline.
- jhbadger 8y agoThere's no question that China is still an authoritarian country with a powerful military, but that's beside the point. You have to look at what has changed to stop making them poor. It's the new policy of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (their euphasism for capitalism)
- harrumph 8y agoIt is you that is missing the point. Their army is not worth noticing because it's "powerful", it must not be overlooked because of what role it serves in the economy. It builds cities itself. Armies don't build (dozens of) cities in market economies. China is in a literal sense a command, not a market, economy in whole swathes of its body, starting with the beating heart of its double digit growth: its construction sector.