What is Reddit's opinion of Property Rights: From Magna Carta to the Fourteenth Amendment (Sexuality & Culture,)?

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>Literally has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism or free markets.

The scientific method is making a hypothesis, and objectively analyzing the results. The birth of what most people consider modern economics is usually attributed to the "Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith, one of the earliest work of economic scientific literature. He impartially observed the properties of countries that get rich, and ones that don't. He objectively came to the conclusion that wealth comes from individual pursuits. Before you armchair-economics your way out of this, try to understand what the implication of that is. Don't give me this "not-science" angle. This is the application of the scientific method in economics. Before that, the entire globe thought like you. "But what if corporations get too rich?", "What happens when we run out of resources", "Who will keep them in check" were all the kind of things that everyone believe before the age of science. Then OBJECTIVE, IMPARTIAL analysis suggested something counter-intuitive. So either you're tunnel visioning into your own perspective without fully researching what you're talking about, or you're spreading lies.

>And to say that the free market has only raised the standard of living is to be horrifically Euro-centric.

Not even close. Counter examples: Singapore, Hong-Kong, South Korea (especially if you compare to North Korea), Japan, Israel, South Africa, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, etc, etc, etc... Evidence is on my side. Not even the reddest communist would disagree with me on this, so I'm not sure what point you're making.

> I would suggest that you look into countries that are currently in poverty, and realize the staggering amount of harm that came from Western "free markets."

Oh, really? Have you heard of the Soviet Union? They didn't collapse because they were militarily weak... Ever hear of communist China? You probably haven't because as far as you can remember everything was probably made in China.... A little disclaimer China before the 1980s was not the same it was today. The high-school debate class level arguments you're throwing at me right now was national propaganda there for decades.

>In the 1300s and 1400s, the system of Mercantilism (effectively proto-capitalism, where countries tried to maximize their profits and encourage the expansion of the merchant class) caused endless war and strife.

Wrong. War and strife for trade didn't start and end in the 1400s... In fact the little detail that separates our version of capitalism and the form of mercantilism practiced in western Europe is a little thing called property rights - an exclusive PRIVILEGE that only used to be handed to kings. Then a little thing called the magna carta extended this to knights, earls, dukes, and other nobility. It was considered a PRIVILEGE to own and trade things on your own whim, so don't give me this stupid shit about it always being there... It was the age of enlightenment that gave this right to ALL citizen. No one advocates for mercantilisim, but they do for free markets are private property rights. A great book to read on this would be this.

>Then, in the 1500s, Europe collectively discovered they could conveniently export all this strife to other continents and just get the money. Colonists enslaved natives wherever they went, stealing land to live on and goods to send back to the mainland. The standard of living in Europe began to rise, but only on the backs of the exploited.

Yes because there was no more strife in Europe since the 1500s... The reason for colonialism was the desire for European monarchs to DOMINATE the trade routes with India... not to export manufacturing like we do now... Using the government to kill people for money has nothing to do with economic systems. You're confusing two separate things into one ( monarchism + capitalism = capitalism, apparently) because you want a capitalist enemy to hate. That would be like saying whites were the ones did all the conquering and killing, and therefore all whites are evil (white culture + capitalism = white culture). But this would be wrong and stupid. You need to be able to separate issues, or you'll end up blaming the wrong things your entire natural born life, without ever actually solving anything.

>It was entirely the fault of the Company, which had most of the parliament in its pocket due to lack of regulation. A huge amount of MPs actually owned stock in the Company, and many even sat on its board of directors. This meant that the people in the British government stood to directly profit off the success of the Company, regardless of whether it's actions were actually beneficial to the country (which they weren't). In the end, this left the Company with almost absolute power. A single corporation managed to get an entire country addicted to Opium, culturally assimilate their primary (stolen) product until it was ingrained into the mind and soul of every citizen, and then influence the government into funding expeditions and raising taxes on their exports to artificially create scarcity.

Creating artificial scarcity is a work of government, not markets. Markets are lifeless. They have no ultimate end. Markets simply mean the lack of barriers in trade between private entities. They are an organic system that works around problems. Which is the exact reason why black markets exist in the most dangerous of totalitarian regimes. The colonization of India under the British Empire officially started in 1857... The East India Company was started in the 1600s. Not that it matters, as you think violence by kinds = capitalism or something which is blatantly wrong... In fact, most of the people of what is now Bengal and Orissa did not view the East India Company as tyrants when they started.

>This is your precious "free market" in action. The whole point of capitalism is that somewhere along the line, someone is trying to make a profit more than they are trying to help anyone. The only way capitalism can create a higher standard of living for any given number of people is by exploiting an equal or greater number of others.

The free market is the fact that we have far fewer natural resources than we once did, yet we have FAR more energy and output than we EVER did, and that is AFTER a population explosion. Free markets allow regular people to get rich by solving problems that societies want. They are not influenced by votes or governments. They grow organically, and they will exist even if you ban it.

EDIT: I have lived in a country that didn't believe in capitalism, and then my family fled to one that does. There are good people and bad people everywhere. But if you care about the human spirit, and freedom, capitalism is OBVIOUSLY superior, by any metric. Do some traveling - see the world. Visit countries that have adopted opposite philosophies than the West. Try to see if it truly is corruption and only that keeps other countries down.