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Yeah, we certainly can't produce toilet paper unless 50% of the population is in poverty.
by makotech222 8y ago
Yeah, we certainly can't produce toilet paper unless 50% of the population is in poverty.
- wyoh 8y agoFreer markets means less poverty though.
- makotech222 8y agoHaha, do they?
- lulmerchant 8y agoAbsolutely, nothing has brought a greater level of prosperity and equality to the world than free market capitalism. This is simply an empirical fact. Just like it is an empirical fact that every socialist nation in history has created huge levels of poverty and inequality.
- makotech222 8y agoHey, remember when the USSR started and they eliminated homelessness within 10 years. And also, were the first to space. In addition, had citizens that were better fed than the US, had more doctors per capita. And this is just from State Capitalism, not Socialism.
- lulmerchant 8y agoNo I don’t, because that never happened. I do remember millions of soviet citizens dying from famine though, and millions more dying from state sponsored killing. I don’t remember any famines taking place in developed free markets during that period. However, I have a pretty clear memory of the two class system that developed in all of the socialist nations that existed in the 20th century. One of the starving poor, and another of the rich oligarchs.
- Avshalom 8y agoI feel like the fall of the British Empire and subsequent reversion to the mean is probably responsible for most of that prosperity.
- lulmerchant 8y agoThe revision to what mean? The pre-British empire mean? Because pre-British empire wasn’t exactly a prosperous period.
- Latteland 8y agoI think the question is how do you define free? Free for powerful to do anything they want? Free subject to govt control? The tension is between those points.
- skookumchuck 8y agoThe term is "free markets" which have a reasonably agreed upon definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market
- cornholio 8y agoTo take your sarcasm further, it appears we can't: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-venezuela-toilet-paper-shortage-kass-0226-20160225-column.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-venezu... (Yes, I know we could)
- monochromatic 8y agoYes, 14.8% = 50% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
- makotech222 8y agoI believe OP was talking about trade throughout the world.
- gkya 8y agoThe USers should learn that there's a other continents, let alone countries. Do they not teach geography in primary schools there? Whenever I post sth about a global problem here there's always some people coming up with links to some data or wiki page on the instance of that in the US, which give me cringes.
- dang 8y agoNational slights, regardless of nation being slighted, aren't ok here. You've done this before, unfortunately. Would you please not do it again? It's obviously uncivil. If people can't respect each other here, they can't comment here. Because of HN's origins, it's often the case that there's some ambiguity about whether a statement is scoped to the US or more widely. The fix for that is disambiguation, not taking or making insults. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jtolmar 8y agoThat's not inherent to markets, it's caused by allowing a market system to have a feedback loop where investments are rewarded proportionately to their size (capitalism). The people able to participate in the feedback loop inevitably become wealthier than those who can't until the market prioritizes what they want over everyone else.