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I see comments like this and I wonder what do people actually learn in school. Adam Smith wrote extensively about this (surely people still learn about him). Hi

I see comments like this and I wonder what do people actually learn in school. Adam Smith wrote extensively about this (surely people still learn about him). His premise were people are naturally greedy, and it is good to use a system that pits their greed against each other. A natural competition to provide goods and services to each other. And it has worked well for hundreds of years, pulling billions out of poverty in just the last few decades. But yeah, government corruption is a problem in any economic system and democracy was supposed to be the check against cronyism.

malermeister 4y ago
The problem with that naive viewpoint is that it assumes that greedy people that got successful playing the game won't use their power to mess with the rules. Once the first set of greedy people gets powerful enough, they change the playing field and cement their lead. 75% of those billions pulled out of poverty were in China [0], which is explicitly not capitalist. [0] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...
- true_religion 4y ago
  That report references the last 40 years. The previous comment is in the context of Adam Smith who died over 200 years ago. Capitalism and democracy are older than the PRC, and the billions aided by it include the entire modern western world.
  - malermeister 4y ago
    The previous comment said, and I quote, "pulling billions out of poverty in just the last few decades". The "last few decades" are around what I would call the last 40 years, wouldn't you agree? The entire modern western world got rich not through some capitalist miracle, but by brutal imperialism and subjugation of the third world.
    - true_religion 4y ago
      My mistake then.
deleted 4y ago
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malermeister 4y ago

The problem with that naive viewpoint is that it assumes that greedy people that got successful playing the game won't use their power to mess with the rules. Once the first set of greedy people gets powerful enough, they change the playing field and cement their lead. 75% of those billions pulled out of poverty were in China [0], which is explicitly not capitalist. [0] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...

true_religion 4y ago
That report references the last 40 years. The previous comment is in the context of Adam Smith who died over 200 years ago. Capitalism and democracy are older than the PRC, and the billions aided by it include the entire modern western world.
- malermeister 4y ago
  The previous comment said, and I quote, "pulling billions out of poverty in just the last few decades". The "last few decades" are around what I would call the last 40 years, wouldn't you agree? The entire modern western world got rich not through some capitalist miracle, but by brutal imperialism and subjugation of the third world.
  - true_religion 4y ago
    My mistake then.

deleted 4y ago

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