IS CAPITALISM STILL THE BEST ENGINE FOR HUMAN FLOURISHING?
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The case for
Global extreme poverty fell from 90% in 1820 to under 10% today, driven overwhelmingly by market economies integrating into global trade. No other economic system produced anything like it — not central planning, not autarky, not command economies. The burden of proof is on capitalism's critics to...
Posted by jconnor
Capitalism's famous failures — monopoly, externalities, boom-bust cycles — are arguments for specific interventions: antitrust, carbon pricing, financial regulation. They are not arguments against markets themselves. The alternative is not some perfectly designed alternative but something...
Posted by jconnor
Socialist and centrally planned economies have produced mass famine, political terror, and stagnation wherever tried at scale. Their defenders have the burden of explaining the historical record, not just the theory. The countries that lifted the most people from poverty — South Korea, Taiwan,...
Posted by jconnor
The case against
Since the 1970s, US GDP has grown dramatically while median wages stagnated and gains flowed almost entirely to the top 1%. The system that lifted billions globally is now concentrating the surplus in a tiny class while the median American's real purchasing power for housing, healthcare, and...
Posted by jconnor
Capitalism has a structural incompatibility with the climate crisis. It externalizes costs onto the future and the poor, and no amount of green capitalism has produced the emissions reductions the physics requires. The market cannot price catastrophic risk it has no incentive to price; that is not...
Posted by jconnor
Democratic institutions designed to tame capitalism are being captured by it. Regulatory agencies are staffed by the industries they regulate; campaigns are funded by the interests they constrain; and billionaires own the media that sets the terms of debate. A system that systematically undermines...
Posted by jconnor
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What is a strong argument for "Is Capitalism Still the Best Engine for Human Flourishing?"?
Global extreme poverty fell from 90% in 1820 to under 10% today, driven overwhelmingly by market economies integrating into global trade. No other economic system produced anything like it — not central planning, not autarky, not command economies. The burden of proof is on capitalism's critics to... (Argued by jconnor on SuperDebate.)
What is a strong argument against "Is Capitalism Still the Best Engine for Human Flourishing?"?
Since the 1970s, US GDP has grown dramatically while median wages stagnated and gains flowed almost entirely to the top 1%. The system that lifted billions globally is now concentrating the surplus in a tiny class while the median American's real purchasing power for housing, healthcare, and... (Argued by jconnor on SuperDebate.)
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