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Comment by AngryData | Hacker News Reader

I would think technology did far more work pulling people out of poverty than capitalism. And capitalism is only like 250 years old. You could have made your same argument 500-1000 years ago about feudalism pulling people out of poverty, and yet I doubt anybody would be all that happy to switch to a feudalist system and would heavily criticize any claims that feudalism was the main driving factor behind improvements in technology and living standards.

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>I would think technology did far more work pulling people out of poverty

Thanks to capitalism!

>And capitalism is only like 250 years old.

And the rate of humanity leaving poverty in that time span is greater than any other time in history.

>You could have made your same argument 500-1000 years ago about feudalism pulling people out of poverty

Err, no? If anything, that pushed even MORE people into poverty. No one sane would ever make that argument.

>yet I doubt anybody would be all that happy to switch to a feudalist system and would heavily criticize any claims that feudalism was the main driving factor behind improvements in technology and living standards.

Because you're inventing a fictional strawman. Feudalism did the opposite of your claim.

It seems like you think all of history was complete garbage for people until the last 200 years and neither technology nor living standards ever improved until then. Serfs worked an average of 40 or less hours per week. The luddites came about because capitalism made their lives worse instead of better. How much of our world is now polluted with heavy metals and toxic chemicals because of unfettered growth at all costs? Capitalism didn't give people public schooling or public infrastructure, and most important technological breakthroughs have come from the military, university grants, and government programs. Without those, capitalism wouldn't have managed jack. You can look at all the areas of the world with little to no government interference within business or economic matters. They haven't sprung to the forefront of technology and living standards because of free enterprise, in many of those places their lives have gotten worse. Russia was industrialized under a communist model, and no matter what flaws the corruption and struggles from within their government brought, the fact that they went from subsidence peasant farms to an industrial power in less than a generation is proof that capitalism isn't the only way forward nor the source of all economic gains.

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