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Comment by tsotha | Hacker News Reader

Much of Marx's critiques of capitalism make some sense. The problem is nobody has come up with a better system for lifting people out of poverty.

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Why does capitalism have to lift anyone out of poverty? The opportunity to own assets and control your own production sometimes provides the means to do so. Just because enough impoverished people are not becoming rich per year does not mean capitalism is not working as intended.

Less people are living in poverty now more than ever:

http://www.worldvision.org/news/worldwide-fewer-people-live-...

Its just that wealth is being more evenly distributed and the U.S. is feeling some of that pressure.

Evenly distributed across the world, you mean. The pressure discussed in this article and probably most of this thread doesn't have to do with that distribution, though. It has to do with the distribution in the US, which has most definitely skewed towards the top. Wealth might be on some trend to level out world-wide, but what's happening here right now and over the past few decades is not that global trend. It's an American trend.

The trend in the US has nothing to do with capitalism per se. We added ten million Central and South American peasants to the bottom end of the job market over the last twenty years or so. I don't know why anyone would be surprised to see a bifurcation of income strata.

Why does capitalism have to lift anyone out of poverty?

Because poor people tend to get sick of their lot and revolt sooner or later. It's been a problem for monarchs through the ages.

There will always be impoverished people. Capitalism provides the best opportunity to choose not to be.

Is it possible to travel and believe this 100%? Capitalism might be the best option but I'm not that confident after seeing the so-called progress it has inflicted on a lot of places. I don't know what a better option is, but I the warts of capitalism sure are ugly.

>Capitalism might be the best option but I'm not that confident after seeing the so-called progress it has inflicted on a lot of places.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "so-called progress".

I mean that I have seen the opposite of progress. Native people with formerly proud cultures. Not technologically advanced, sure, but long traditions and ones anyone should be proud to have (or had, past tense, in this case). And these groups appeared completely devastated and exploited.

From your point of view, maybe. But these aren't museum exhibits. They're people. They want the same sorts of things the rest of us want, and they're willing to make adjustments.

Exactly. But the things they want seem pretty pretty unobtainable from what I've seen.

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