I am a big fan of sharply curtailing luxury consumption (luxuries being things like air travel, car suburbs, 6000sqft houses, and vast mountains of plastic per person, along with the obvious like superyachts) but it is a red herring to point to the continued existence of poor countries as evidence that capitalism per se is a failure.
With zero exceptions, every society in history which has advanced from a state of high or even near-universal poverty (as all societies once were) to providing a reasonable average standard of living has done so via capitalist processes. That ranges from the laissez-faire of the 19th century USA to the oligarchic model of Japan and the state capitalism of China, but at some point they all engaged with the world trading system and let entrepreneurs try and make a buck - or a billion bucks.
That said, capitalism is not a religious commandment or complete philosophical system, it's just an economic tool and must be used properly. The guiding principle is that capital must be free to earn high returns where it can, but - crucially - the conditions must exist such that new capital is free to flow into the high-return sector(s) until such returns are competed down to the economy-wide average, on a cyclical adjusted basis. Sustained extraordinary returns on capital are almost prima facie evidence of a market failure.
Capitalism as an economic concept says absolutely nothing about how to organize a society in other respects - such as the decision to build car suburbs, let in endless millions of immigrants from foreign countries, and pump the food system full of plasticizers and Roundup, versus nurturing a culturally homogeneous society living in human-scaled places and prioritizing human health as a matter of policy.
I am a big fan of sharply curtailing luxury consumption (luxuries being things like air travel, car suburbs, 6000sqft houses, and vast mountains of plastic per person, along with the obvious like superyachts) but it is a red herring to point to the continued existence of poor countries as evidence that capitalism per se is a failure.
With zero exceptions, every society in history which has advanced from a state of high or even near-universal poverty (as all societies once were) to providing a reasonable average standard of living has done so via capitalist processes. That ranges from the laissez-faire of the 19th century USA to the oligarchic model of Japan and the state capitalism of China, but at some point they all engaged with the world trading system and let entrepreneurs try and make a buck - or a billion bucks.
That said, capitalism is not a religious commandment or complete philosophical system, it's just an economic tool and must be used properly. The guiding principle is that capital must be free to earn high returns where it can, but - crucially - the conditions must exist such that new capital is free to flow into the high-return sector(s) until such returns are competed down to the economy-wide average, on a cyclical adjusted basis. Sustained extraordinary returns on capital are almost prima facie evidence of a market failure.
Capitalism as an economic concept says absolutely nothing about how to organize a society in other respects - such as the decision to build car suburbs, let in endless millions of immigrants from foreign countries, and pump the food system full of plasticizers and Roundup, versus nurturing a culturally homogeneous society living in human-scaled places and prioritizing human health as a matter of policy.
How does one live in this nightmare of a world! Thank you for this enlightening piece.
Where is part 1 of this series?
Capitalism really is a death cult. When its working well, we die faster.