> Even the most hardcore anti-capitalists have to give respect to how the combination of capitalism and technology has worked to lift most of the world out poverty and provided us with the security and comfort only kings enjoyed just a few century’s ago.
No, they wouldn't. Any more that they would have to "respect" that the combination of Stalinism and technology lifted Russia out of poverty and post-war destruction. That's because it's quite easy to imagine that Russia could have been electrified without Stalinist terror.
> Free-Market Capitalism has always outperformed top down economic control because those at the top can’t manage all the information about the economy, such as who is best at what, and where the most efficient areas to allocate resources are.
Citation needed. On the surface, this claim would seem completely absurd to anyone familiar with 20th century history. I'm writing this from South Korea, a country that developed "miraculously" under completely top down control of a military dictator working from centralised 5-year plans. One needn't search too hard to find other, similar, examples. It would be interesting to see a single large-scale counter-example that actually existed on planet earth in our timeline.
Edit: maybe I'm just being ornery, but I just couldn't get past the platitudes in the front-matter to the meat of the article which I no doubt would be heartily agreeing with. Hah.
I came here for this. What a way to start an article with a foregone conclusion.
This is quite typical of discussions on this matter: Every discussion of "where to go from here" immediately asserts that "where we are is great!" which often leads to conclusions of the kind "therefore we should proceed in the same direction, but with this one weird trick."
> I'm writing this from South Korea, a country that developed "miraculously" under completely top down control of a military dictator working from centralised 5-year plans.
South Korea's prosperity is almost entirely attributable to its economic liberalization.
No, they wouldn't. Any more that they would have to "respect" that the combination of Stalinism and technology lifted Russia out of poverty and post-war destruction. That's because it's quite easy to imagine that Russia could have been electrified without Stalinist terror.
> Free-Market Capitalism has always outperformed top down economic control because those at the top can’t manage all the information about the economy, such as who is best at what, and where the most efficient areas to allocate resources are.
Citation needed. On the surface, this claim would seem completely absurd to anyone familiar with 20th century history. I'm writing this from South Korea, a country that developed "miraculously" under completely top down control of a military dictator working from centralised 5-year plans. One needn't search too hard to find other, similar, examples. It would be interesting to see a single large-scale counter-example that actually existed on planet earth in our timeline.
Edit: maybe I'm just being ornery, but I just couldn't get past the platitudes in the front-matter to the meat of the article which I no doubt would be heartily agreeing with. Hah.