The Myth That Capitalism Saved the World

Because capitalism requires productivity from its citizens, and the market organizes this labor in an efficient manner, which is why our grocery stores are always filled with food & toiletries.

American democracy is the result of the British Parliament's misuse of capitalism ("no taxation without representation"). Capitalism is not static and is always correcting and improving itself with the help of pro-capital governments, like women's suffrage and child labor protection laws.

> capitalism alone can’t be the engine of human progress

For one, very few people claim that capitalism alone is the solution to human progress. That being said, it very much is the engine. We don't know of a better engine than capitalism, it creates value at unprecedented rates. That doesn't mean that you can't steer its output towards objectives that benefit society in ways that markets are unlikely to address in a timely fashion.

Take Norway. It has a trillion dollar fund, started from selling oil, now continuing to make money by investing in foreign companies. In addition to this, they have a market economy. Because they have so many socialized programs, the implication seems to be that this is not a capitalist country, but this is simply not true. Capitalism, again, is the engine.

Because a state with taxpayer funding produced a notable step forward for humanity does not mean that capitalism had nothing to do with this, it means that capitalism produced the taxpayer funding.

In the developing world, whether it's the US in 1880 or Guyana in 2019, rising productivity means people able to afford more capital and consumer goods, like insulated walls, menstrual pads, diapers and toilet paper, which collectively make an enormous impact on human health.

None of his arguments are appealing or interesting.

However, it is definitely the case that the enormous technological advances we have seen in the last few centuries could not have happened without capitalism. The proof is that socialist countries, in spite of enormous investment in technology and science, have failed to produce any significant technological advances outside the military and space exploration realms. In the few cases where someone in a socialist country invented something important, like continuous casting or the cat scan, it languished until it was taken up by capitalist countries.

Everyone seems to think their ism is the best while conveniently ignoring ills in the past.