Mark Humphrys (politics)

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Nov 2024 entries
Oct 2024 entries

Politics - Communism - Capitalism






  Capitalism is heroic

Capitalism is moral

Money does buy happiness

Intentions v. Outcomes

Economic freedom

GDP

Economic freedom leads to prosperity

You should be happy and grateful

The Western poor

The Third World

The Irish economy


In favour of capitalism

The basic problem of economics - How can we make our country prosperous? - was solved long ago, in the 18th century, by Adam Smith and other thinkers of the Enlightenment. Yet some people, all these years later, still don't believe it.

Economic freedom (capitalism, property rights), intellectual freedom (science and technology) and self-interest makes societies prosperous. Strong, utopian government leads to unemployment, poverty, emigration and famine. This has been repeatedly demonstrated in practice in countries all over the world. Yet ignorant thinkers continue to resist these ideas even today.



Christmas in a western shopping centre.
Hi-tech phones and glossy books and cafes and mulled wine.
Whereas the lot of humanity for most of its history has been starvation and terror.
Some people think the above is "vulgar capitalism", distasteful and repellent. But only someone who is already rich and free could think that way.
While I personally prefer the urban street to shopping centres, and while any particular shop or display may aesthetically offend me, overall capitalism has liberated us, not oppressed us, and we should be grateful every day for the well-ordered free market and property rights that have delivered all these wonderful goods to us. We are lucky, and we should be happy and grateful.
See full size. Image from here. See terms of use.





Capitalism



Capitalism is heroic






I, Pencil by Leonard E. Read, 1958 (explained above by Milton Friedman).



"Free Trade: The Great Prosperity Machine".
Free trade creates wealth and promotes world peace.
The kind of video that should be shown in schools, instead of rubbish like The Story of Stuff.





Capitalism is moral

Capitalism doesn't just make countries rich, while socialism makes them poor. We all know that. It's old news. But there is more: Capitalism is morally superior.



"Make Mine Freedom", a simple cartoon from 1948 about why capitalism is morally superior to communism.
The kind of video that should be shown in schools, instead of rubbish like The Story of Stuff.





Money does buy happiness







Wealth is good: The rich countries are the happiest ones.
Happiness by country. From the 2015 World Happiness Report.
Also (statistically): Western values make you happy. Eastern values, Islamic values and traditional cultures do not make people happy.



The correlation between money and happiness.
From Pew Survey, July 2007.





Intentions v. Outcomes

If it is true that wealth is good, and poverty is bad, then who is actually ending poverty and creating wealth?

The fact is that the right is the friend of the poor. The left is the enemy of the poor:




Milton Friedman on greed, Phil Donahue show, 1979.




Economic freedom




Ranking of economic freedom - The Heritage Foundation



Map of world economic freedom 2013.
From The Heritage Foundation.
See full size.






Ranking of economic freedom - The Fraser Institute





Economic Freedom of the World, 2008.
From here.





Ease of Doing Business Index




Ease of Doing Business Index, 2006.
Green nations rank higher, red nations lower.
Africa is poor because governments in Africa make it hard to set up a business there.
From here.






Other rankings of economies




GDP

Perhaps the clearest finding in all of economics is the correlation between economic freedom and prosperity. Compare the table of economic freedom with the table of the richest countries.

Socialists claim to want to make people better off. They claim to want to reduce poverty, not increase it. And yet they refuse to approach the issue scientifically, namely by seeing what actually does reduce poverty, and adopting it.

If you want your country to be prosperous, the most logical thing to do is the following. Forget ideology. Forget your pre-conceptions. Simply look at the countries high on this list, and do what they do.




World GDP per capita, 2007.
Compare with map of economic freedom above.
Economic freedom is clearly correlated with prosperity.
From here.






Economic freedom leads to prosperity





Economic freedom and GDP per capita.
From 2011 Index of Economic Freedom.







Economic freedom and GDP per capita.
From 2013 Index of Economic Freedom.
See also 2002 chart from Robert A. Lawson.



Economic freedom and GDP per capita, by region.
From 2013 Index of Economic Freedom.



Economic freedom and the wealth of the poorest 10 percent.
2002 figures. From Robert A. Lawson.



Economic freedom makes countries rich and happy.
Video: "Economic Freedom & Quality of Life". From Charles Koch Institute.



The graph above showing country names.




You should be happy and grateful



"Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy".
Louis C.K. on how people don't appreciate the wonderful world that capitalism and science has delivered for us.
And search.



Whatever Marxist crap they spout, people vote with their feet.
And their feet make them flee towards capitalist countries and away from socialist countries. Always.






The Western poor (separate page)







The Third World poor (separate page)






 "The great revolution of the twentieth century will turn out to be the
 liberal revolution
- by 1970 it was already patently obvious that the socialist revolution
 had failed everywhere."

- Jean-Francois Revel.

"In the past five hundred years, perhaps in all history, there has only been one genuinely successful revolution - one that delivered on its promises for a better world, based on the principles of freedom, equality, enterprise and endeavour; one that actually succeeded, despite the acknowledged imperfection of some of its outcomes. ... It was the American Revolution of 1776. That's the only one that has ever really worked."
- Rob Foot, The New Anti-Semitism?

"in the long violent saga of mankind we have rarely done anything as benign as going shopping, rarely devised anything as socially advantageous as property rights and the rule of law, rarely enriched the poor or enhanced lives as we did by creating capitalism."
- Daniel Finkelstein on those who criticise capitalism.



 




Politics      Religion      Since 1995.      New 250 G VPS server.


Banned in Iran: This site is banned in Iran.

Blocked on Twitter by the regressive left and Islamists: I love debate. I love ideas. But the Western left and their friends the Islamic right do not return the favour. Their response to opposing ideas, whether expressed politely or robustly, is often to block. See Who blocks me on Twitter.

I like debate. But I do have rules. See Who I block on Twitter.

Twitter is broken, 2016 to 2022: I am on Twitter at markhumphrys. Twitter was a great place for debate before 2016. You could meet everyone in the world, and argue about ideas. Starting in 2016, Twitter became increasingly broken. It became full of reporting and bans and censorship. In 2019, Twitter even started shadowbanning me for no reason that was ever explained, or could be appealed. By 2022, everyone was looking for a better place to debate.

Twitter is saved, 2022: In 2022 Elon Musk bought Twitter and started to end the censorship. It looks great so far. Twitter seems to be saved.