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When the history of the last 20 years is written, most of what happened in the developed world will be relegated to the footnotes, or compressed into slogans li
by mnemonicsloth 13y ago
When the history of the last 20 years is written, most of what happened in the developed world will be relegated to the footnotes, or compressed into slogans like "technology advanced rapidly."
Here's what really matters: according to the UN, nearly a billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty in the last 20 years. Further gains are feasible and expected.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-billion-people-have-been-taken-out-extreme-poverty-20-years-world-should-aim http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-bill...
- antihero 13y agoThe question is this - is this due to capitalism, or if we'd moved past capitalism, would this have happened far far sooner?
- adamtj 13y agoSure, if we had moved past capitalism, we could have eliminated poverty by now. And if we had moved past the light-speed limitation, we'd be traveling amongst the stars by now. So why don't we just do that? As is often said, capitalism is the worst economic system we've come up with . . . except for all the others. The trick to moving past capitalism is not regressing backward from it. Some big regressions famously happened in recent centuries with our big experiments in public ownership. Unfortunately, large scale public ownership has some complications that tend to result in large scale death. What new system would you propose that is better?
- gremlinsinc 13y agoCurious, what do you consider the next 'leap' from capitalism? Something completely new, or some socialist/capitalist hybrid? Or something like the Incans(? - correct me if I'm wrong) - one of the Ancient indians had a system where there was no money, people took what they needed/wanted, and everyone contributed to the whole of society.. There was no such thing as currency.