Regards, Ivan
Posted on 01/11/2003 4:10:17 PM PST by MadIvan
Capitalism is what brought, directly or indirectly, the improvements in human welfare seen during the 20th century. Its resources and incentives produced the technological developments that altered our lives, from antibiotics to MRI scans, from telephones to computers, motor cars to jet airliners, oil refining to air-conditioning.
In countries that enjoy such developments, capitalism has paid for education, healthcare, welfare support, holidays and pensions. For most of the second half of the 20th century, especially the 1980s and 1990s, the lure of those benefits proved strong enough to make most people accept capitalism even if they could not bring themselves to love it.
The phenomenon of “globalisation” is in truth simply the spread of this open, trading capitalism to countries around the world that had sought to shut themselves away from it. China, Vietnam, the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites shut themselves away because they were communist; most of Latin America shut itself away because it wanted to be self-sufficient; India shut itself away because of a mixture of socialism and the urge for self-sufficiency.
During the past 20 years the governments of countries containing around 3 billion people — half the world’s population — have sought either to adopt a basically capitalist economic system or to connect their existing domestic capitalisms to international trade and capital flows by opening up their borders. Globalisation is simply the voluntary adoption of international capitalism.
It is not necessary to be a professional economist to realise that this voluntary process is controversial, however. Protests against globalised capitalism have erupted in many cities around the world, generally at times when international institutions (and thus the media) were holding their annual get-togethers. In domestic politics, too, trade unions and corporate bosses campaign for restrictions on imports or on foreign competition when their sales are suffering badly. This happens especially frequently in Europe and America in old industries such as steel, textiles and agriculture.
Environmentalists meanwhile seek restrictions on capitalism everywhere, regardless of whether the firms involved are domestic or international, and whether the environmental damage is domestic (eg pollution or new dams) or international (eg global warming).
Since all the progress that has been, and will be, seen in technology and in general welfare has arisen from capitalist activities, and since no alternative set of ideas has emerged to give hope to poorer countries that they can match the rich world’s progress by adopting anything other than capitalism, it might seem reasonable to assume that capitalism is likely to be a given for the 21st century. One way or another it will be a feature of life during the next hundred years. That is surely true. But all the difference in the world, and for the world, is contained in that phrase, “one way or another”.
How much technology develops, how it develops, how well off we become in material terms, how big a problem the relative poverty of the underdeveloped world will pose for the developed countries, how the planet’s environment serves to limit or enable our activities and circumscribe or enhance our lives: all these questions depend on the way capitalism develops, or rather the way it is allowed to develop.
Regards, Ivan
Indeed it is
Bump
Not because they're "pro-environment". But because, underneath all the foliage, they're "anti-capitalist".
Applause for Mr. Emmott -- for not only recognizing this vital fact, but for stating it so bluntly.
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