Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

[Forty Two]

FFS shut up about Milton Freedman will you. A pain in the butt. Some over privileged cunt who has not got a clue what poverty is about.

No. This thread was created to discuss the concept as enunciated by Friedman, of how capitalism and the free market really are the best solutions to poverty. Why are you clicking on the thread if you don't want to talk about it? Was something confusing you about the subject matter? You thought this was a different thread? There aren't other threads out there not involving Friedman's views on capitalism?

Over-privileged? How do you know he's over-privileged? A child of Hungarian, Jewish immigrants whose parents moved from poverty to middle class? Raised in the "upper crust" neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York and Rahway, New Jersey? And, the Ivy League public school system of Rahway, New Jersey, lol? That privilege?

How would YOU know what poverty is about, Dutchy? You're from the Netherlands, right?

Surely, you don't have real poverty there, do you? Not like anything Friedman would have faced in Brooklyn and Rahway, right? In Brooklyn and Rahway, the poverty and extreme wealth disparity of the US would have been front and center for him to see and experience in his daily lifeand also viewed in the context of the information provided by his parents about life in Hungary under the Emperor Franz Josef, right? Surely, Friedman, child of immigrants, growing up the hardscrabble world of early 20th century United States, in the free-wheeling pre-FDR-New Deal days, when robber barons owned everything, there was no safety net, and it was pure dog-eat-dog, knows a bit more about poverty than a modern day Dutchman, who lives in the nation which has the greatest and fairest legal system, and the most rational and caring economic system, on the face of the Earth - surely, Netherlanders today are largely unexposed to poverty (unless they travel outside of the Netherlands), right?

[Svartalf]

none, a market is either regulated , and then it's not really free, or not, and then the biggest players carve themselves monopolies or states of oligoconcurrence and they imprison the market as surely as would a marxist state.

A good point.

Also, if Uncle Milt endorses Mill's moral principle that the state may legitimately coerce citizens to alleviate/avoid harms, then surely it is right to tax in order to support the impoverished (unless one is to argue that poverty isn't a harm)?

poverty sure harms me

[Forty Two]

How is it that you have poverty where you are? Odd.

[Svartalf]

It's the 21 and I'm already out of funds, if that's not poverty, I dinna ken what is

[Forty Two]

I would think a civilized country would not allow such things to happen. I expect it out of the US, but a modern, civilized, industrialized, western European country? Can't be...

[Svartalf]

there's not a thing as a civilized country in the world

[Sean Hayden]

[Strontium Dog]

I can accept that no "perfect" capitalist country has ever existed. In which case, one should find the most capitalist country that has ever existed on the planet, and the most socialist, then compare the two. That will surely determine which system produces the better outcomes.

[PsychoSerenity]

I can accept that no "perfect" capitalist country has ever existed. In which case, one should find the most capitalist country that has ever existed on the planet, and the most socialist, then compare the two. That will surely determine which system produces the better outcomes.

Because taking a single data point and failing to account for any other variables has always been the best way to do science!

[Strontium Dog]

Take as many data points as you want. The outcome will be the same.

[Brian Peacock]

none, a market is either regulated , and then it's not really free, or not, and then the biggest players carve themselves monopolies or states of oligoconcurrence and they imprison the market as surely as would a marxist state.

A good point.

Also, if Uncle Milt endorses Mill's moral principle that the state may legitimately coerce citizens to alleviate/avoid harms, then surely it is right to tax in order to support the impoverished (unless one is to argue that poverty isn't a harm)?

The general principle Milton sets forth is that the government's role is to avoid/alleviate harm by citizens against each other.

It's interesting, though, Milton does not object to alleviating poverty. In the last video I posted above, he discusses exactly that. His suggestion is to have the government enact a negative income tax, so that people who need money get money. He said that poverty is a problem of money. So, give people who need money, money. His objection in economic terms is the role of the government in doling out money like we do now - $X for food, $X for housing, $X for something else - basically determining for the poor what they need to spend their money on. I would think that the notion of the government simply providing sort of a "basic income" that allows people to retain their autonomy and simplifies the process of getting needed money into the hands of people who need money would be a good thing.

I think if some folks here actually took the time to understand where Milty is coming from, they will see that what he's advancing is his view on how to make people's lives better, including the lives of the poor. And, that free markets do not mean anarcho-capitalism, and that regulations are not the same thing as socialism. We seem to run into this notion that if capitalism is not in a state of zero government, no laws, complete anarchy, then it's not really capitalism - and that's a fundamental misunderstanding of free market and/or laissez-faire capitalism, which has not ever meant that. It's not like Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations described anarchy.

My point, perhaps too subtly made, is that capitalism isn't concerned with alleviating poverty - it's concerned with maximising capital. Those seeking to maximise their capital resources are, of course, quick to baulk at the idea of the state saying, "Well, you have to give us some of your moola because little Johnny has no shoes" - that baulking, it seems to me, is the entire basis for the 'state coercion' argument favoured by ideological capitalism. Thus such capitalists treat us to the rhetoric of complaint; of the state extorting money from the successful to fritter on the unsuccessful; of making the productive the indentured slaves of the unproductive; of the government being looters, robbers, or symbolic emasculaters or even economic rapists, and of welfare being a corrupting institution predicated on thievery in the service of the greedy and the feckless etc.

Uncle Milt might, in your view, have some progressive ideas about alleviating poverty, but those ideas are not 'capitalist' in any substantial or meaningful sense.

[PsychoSerenity]

Take as many data points as you want. The outcome will be the same.

Rerun history fifty times and then another fifty but with the west championing socialism and the east capitalism, and then get back to me.

[JimC]

Very few people today are going to argue for "pure" socialism, which involves state ownership and control of the entire economy. Given free enterprise of some sort, all the arguments on this thread amount to advocating a particular position somewhere on a continuum, where the main variables are the amount of regulatory controls exerted by government, plus taxation and social policies. Clearly, Seth in the past was at the lunatic end of virtually no government action. 42 expresses a view which is simply a fair bit further away from the amount of government control of capitalism than those from European social democracies.
Perhaps there is not one optimum position world-wide, but a variety, ones that suit particular societies. At least to a degree, the ballot box in democracies allows the people some voice in the point in the government control continuum that suits their particular society.

[pErvinalia]

none, a market is either regulated , and then it's not really free, or not, and then the biggest players carve themselves monopolies or states of oligoconcurrence and they imprison the market as surely as would a marxist state.

A good point.

Also, if Uncle Milt endorses Mill's moral principle that the state may legitimately coerce citizens to alleviate/avoid harms, then surely it is right to tax in order to support the impoverished (unless one is to argue that poverty isn't a harm)?

No, no, that's different, Brian. Impoverishment is a choice.

[pErvinalia]

I can accept that no "perfect" capitalist country has ever existed. In which case, one should find the most capitalist country that has ever existed on the planet, and the most socialist, then compare the two. That will surely determine which system produces the better outcomes.

Only if one deals in false dichotomies. It's not a choice between only two extremes, you realise?