Don't forget exploiting future generations at home and abroad. It'll be the ultimate irony if we become extinct due to our own greed.

> American prosperity is as much an outcome of capitalism as poverty, repression, and murders in Central America are.

ANY sort of inherent human greed capitalizes on suffering. It doesn't magically disappear with another system. There is always a pareto distribution of wealth. The differences are in which metrics are the primary leverage for accumulation and the scale of the differentials (wealth disparity) along the curve.

Was capitalism responsible for the wars waged in that region by the Aztecs? Was it responsible for the massive losses of life in the USSR and Mao's China? You can't just say that because X country is capitalist, everything that happens in it is because of capitalism. It's just an economic system, that's all. Projecting it's effects beyond the realm of economics requires some justification.

Capitalism didn't originate the concept of resources, or politics, or even money. How can you justify blaming Capitalism for things that happen just as much, if not many, many orders of magnitude more in non-capitalist societies?

Conversely I think it is justifiable to attribute the enormous economic gains of that billion people to capitalism directly. It's an economic system and we're measuring economic gains directly attributable to investment, often replacing decidedly un-capitalist systems.

I'm not sure you can call what is in Central America actual functioning capitalism. A random individual in that area can't easily raise capital and start a business. They are subject to extreme levels of crime and cronyism. A lot of Central America is more like a set of fiefdoms with a king rather than what would reasonably be called some kind of western capitalism.

Consider your favourite successful startup and move it to Central America. Now consider what additional factors it needs to take in to simply operate. Take security as an example: Private guards acting with high aggression (machine guns) are a basic requirement in some areas. Compare that to New York (Hand gun).

It's not a reasonable comparison.