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To: commieprof
I should add that people in developing countries are not being liberated by the opportunites provided by U.S.-dominated world capitalism.

It is a fact that captalism cannot yield improvements for anyone without certain unfortunate problems. Many factory workers were poorly paid and worked in lousy conditions, but the wealth they generated for the factory owners was re-invested to provide factories with better working conditions which operated more efficiently, and whose owners could thus offer workers more money [and had to, to stop those workers from going to work at other factories that could offer more money]. Likewise, early steam engines were horrendously innefficient and horribly polluting, and yet it was the savings they generated which provided the capital to research improvements to provide engines which provide ten times as much useful energy from each ton of coal while producing a fraction of the 'real' pollution (carbon dioxide excepted, which per ton is going to be essentially constant).

If early steam engines had to comply with anything even remotely resembling the pollution laws that exist today, the industrial revolution never would have happened. Likewise if today's regulations regarding working conditions were applicable in the nineteenth century. It is the wealth generated when conditions are bad which allows them to get better. Prevent the generation of such wealth, and the standard of living cannot improve.

One thing which has really been lost in the world today is the notion of people toiling in the interest that their children would have a better life than their own. Unfortunately, for many classes of people today such a notion is almost unfathomable.

53 posted on 07/08/2002 5:42:12 PM PDT by supercat
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To: supercat
Many factory workers were poorly paid and worked in lousy conditions,

It is significant that they left the fields to work in those factories...

86 posted on 07/08/2002 6:05:05 PM PDT by marron
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