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Kevin, its no coincidence that the poorest societies, the ones where you most commonly find despots, are almost universally the ones who are suffering under having to recover from being systematically destroyed by the ‘freer’ societies in search of wealth, and you’ll usually find that many of the despots have been set up and supported by outside societies in order to continue the pillaging. You should read a bit about what the Dutch did for gems in africa, or what the Spanish did to South America, and there are many examples closer to home if you care to look. The thing that tweaks me about your line of thinking is how conveniently bereft of context and history it is. There is no cause and effect, there’s only what we have currently. Its basically the FYIGM argument.
Not every despotic regime is the result of first-world plundering, nor is every country that is the product of first-world plundering a despotic regime.
...but that's not even the point I was making. I know it's fun to throw our hands in the air and pretend like we can ignore real solutions to poverty by complaining about how europe screwed up so much of the world, but it has very little to do with the simple correlation of which I spoke.
We have made a few superficial improvements but we are still human.
Superficial improvements? Are you fucking kidding me? It used to be the *NORM* for powerful people in a society to be allowed to murder, rape, and otherwise injure the lower classes with impunity. We used to allow human beings to be bought and sold as property. Most people lived in a constant state of warfare (think Afghanistan or sub-saharan africa today -- only everywhere).
Yes, we've come a long way. As good as it makes people feel to bitch about whatever petty problems that they face today ("oh no taxes" "oh no unemployment" "oh no my 401kaaaaaay"), it's immeasurably better today.
Could we still use improving? Absolutely, and we always will. If you honestly think things are bad as long as we're human, you may as well just kill yourself now.
I think the poorest societies are also the least capitalistic.
One has little to do with the other. India and China are comparably wealthy (with china perhaps slightly ahead), but they have very different levels of capitalism. There aren't a whole lot of "capitalistic" third word cesspools because those places tend to not have any economy at all. You can't have capitalism without a strong, stable government to protect it.
Real slavery? I guess people used to be literally eaten alive by cannibals. Now, they are merely figuratively eaten alive by banksters. Progress huh?
Anyone who refers to taxation as slavery is being just as stupid as people who compare health care to genocide.
No, comparing anything that we have to deal with today to the hardships endured by slaves is so far from being a rational argument that it's not even really worth debating.
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I came across this excellent article:
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4399
There are a lot of different emotions going on in the world: healthcare, recession, war, climate change, etc. We must not get lost in the chaos and we must not forget that economic freedom is the only true freedom. We must resolutely reject soft moralism and take a stand. The only real propellant of human societies is, has always been, and will always be economic prosperity.
Evolution favors strength. In societies, economy is the source of strength. The only system that puts Evolution in the context of economy is Capitalism. Please support Free Market wherever it is attacked.
Beware of the following concepts: