Posts Tagged ‘capitalism’

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They’re Number 1

May 4, 2016

This article appeared in February, 2015, so the Pew Research survey mentioned below is probably around 18 months old.

Communist Vietnam just adores global capitalism—and it’s easy to see why

Global capitalism isn’t always easy to love. But Vietnam is still in the free-market honeymoon phase.

Roughly 95% of Vietnamese respondents to the Pew Research Center’s spring survey of global attitudes agreed with the following statement: “Most people are better off in a free market economy, even though some people are rich and some are poor.” That was the highest rate of agreement among all the countries where researchers asked the question.

pew-better-off-in-free-market

Of course, capitalism is always easier to love during an economic expansion. And Vietnam has had itself quite a boomlet in recent years. The country is steadily making its way up the manufacturing food chain, depending less on churning out low-skill manufactured goods like textiles and shoes to produce more sophisticated products such as smartphones. And foreign capital has poured in, thanks to global companies’ eagerness to tap pools of labor that remain relatively cheap in comparison to fast rising Chinese wages. That all means that standards of living are going up. The IMF expects the economy to expand by 5.6% this year. […]

I recall being in the last few draft lotteries during the Vietnam War. (I never served.) And now the Vietnamese are schooling us – in markets at least.

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Intellectuals and capitalism

August 18, 2015

I think Mr Mackey makes a good point early in this clip about what amounts to snobbery, in a word. (After the mid-point, he gets off onto other topics.)

A free market is the most reliable way to let the next mad genius succeed.

Glenn Reynolds had a good op-ed on a related topic this week.

Fast moving bad news builds prosperity

Nassim Nicholas Taleb recently tweeted: “The free-market system lets you notice the flaws and hides its benefits. All other systems hide the flaws and show the benefits.”

This drew a response: “The most valuable property of the price mechanism is as a reliable mechanism for delivering bad news.” These two statements explain a lot about why socialist systems fail pretty much everywhere but get pretty good press, while capitalism has delivered truly astounding results but is constantly besieged by detractors.

It is simple really: When the “Great Leader” builds a new stadium, everyone sees the construction. Nobody sees the more worthwhile projects that didn’t get done instead because the capital was diverted, through taxation, from less visible but possibly more worthwhile ventures — a thousand tailor shops, bakeries or physician offices.

At the same time, markets deliver the bad news whether you want to hear it or not, but delivering the bad news is not a sign of failure, it is a characteristic of systems that work. When you stub your toe, the neurons in between your foot and your head don’t try to figure out ways not to send the news to your brain. If they did, you’d trip a lot more often. Likewise, in a market, bad decisions show up pretty rapidly: Build a car that nobody wants, and you’re stuck with a bunch of expensive unsold cars; invest in new technologies that don’t work, and you lose a lot of money and have nothing to show for it. These painful consequences mean that people are pretty careful in their investments, at least so long as they’re investing their own money. […]

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Slum dog millionaires

July 23, 2015

Here’s the opening of an interesting article at Cato at Liberty. RTWT.

How Capitalism Is Undermining the Indian Caste System

Karl Marx was wrong about many things but right about one thing: the revolutionary way capitalism attacks and destroys feudalism. As I explain in a new study, in India, the rise of capitalism since the economic reforms of 1991 has also attacked and eroded casteism, a social hierarchy that placed four castes on top with a fifth caste—dalits—like dirt beneath the feet of others. Dalits, once called untouchables, were traditionally denied any livelihood save virtual serfdom to landowners and the filthiest, most disease-ridden tasks, such as cleaning toilets and handling dead humans and animals. Remarkably, the opening up of the Indian economy has enabled dalits to break out of their traditional low occupations and start businesses. The Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DICCI) now boasts over 3,000 millionaire members. This revolution is still in its early stages, but is now unstoppable.

As an aside, my brother-in-law’s wife was born in Kolkata (Calcutta). She told us a story once about her parents’ household and mentioned in passing that the family’s servants washed their car by hauling water in buckets.

It made my back ache to think of it. I’m hoping those servants have better things to do these days than schlepping water to wash cars.

But getting back to castes and feudalism, I’ve always been fond of this rhetorical question: When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?

That applies as well to Eve’s children in India as it does to her children everywhere else.

Anyone claiming privileges because of "breeding" or "family line" deserves a poke in the nose, IMO. When you think about those claims, they’re just another form of racism — or maybe "sub-racism", which is a concept that’s even more ridiculous.

Now that I think of it, claims like those make a very good reductio ad absurdum argument against racism.

Update: (8/18/15)

I just came across this trailer for a documentary that will appear on public television soon.

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