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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

The US is far from a pure capitalist society. Between 1800-1900, despite a civil war and the massive economic damage involved in such things, we went from being a backwards third world country to being a world power in a nearly pure-capitalist society. We were well on our way to eliminating poverty.

Uh, US poverty in 1900 was immense. This was the era of the Wobblies, The Jungle and the Robber Barons. Yes, a variety of radical ideas appeared about then. Why?? Look at the conditions...

It seems like length abuse is creeping into HN...

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Poverty is the natural state of man. Its not until he could trade and keep the results of his efforts that he was able to start accumulating capital.

Government limited to the enforcement of property rights allows each of us to accumulate capital.

But some of us are smarter, work harder and defer consumption. They can accumulate more than others. There is nothing wrong with that.

Then mass production and mass media came along, enabling some to sell what they produced to millions of people and accumulating a lot more. Still no crime committed.

In fact, the average person benefits when others are able to produce a lot with little effort. Things become cheaper.

And those who save rather than consuming benefit us too. We can borrow their money and invest in improving our own productive abilities.

Its true that those who commit crimes and get away with it also can accumulate wealth, but that doesn't mean that those who've respected the rights of others don't deserve what they've accumulated.

I think its also worth noting that people from all over the world moved to the US to partake in the immense poverty.

So you're saying that the standard of living was worse or no better in 1900 than it was in 1800?

People talk about the "Robber Barrons" but this is really a pejorative. Standard oil, for instance was able to lower the cost of gasoline dramatically, I believe it was more than an order of magnitude. This paved the way to the car being a viable product for the middle class and eventually nearly everyone.

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