What is Reddit's opinion of The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else?

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> The article makes the general point that the only reason poor countries are poor is because of a lack of property rights (or enforcement thereof). They use a bunch of anecdotes and talking points from a think tank to convince us of this.

FWIW, one of the authors (an economist) also has a pretty well regarded book on this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CW0MA1S/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

That is not a very good argument.

US Constitution, despite being good is not a holy document and can clearly be improved. Even the founding fathers knew it that is why we have amendments.

I doubt I will persuade you but maybe someone else reads this the reason why it is their job is that is it is government's job to arbitrate disputes. To be able to do that law abstraction must be created to support the interaction in the society. I do not have a hundreds of examples but there are imho three points where this happened.

- When we were hunter gatherers term of property (in terms of land) was likely not important. But once people started to tend to their fields and build buildings someone needs to define what it is.

- the corporation and we already covered that

- dawn of intellectual property. It probably started with music but it evolved more and more and maybe even majority of property is intellectual in the age of internet. You can look at the 230 without which the internet would not look like it does.

There is actually an interesting book that documents what happens to countries that failed evolve law to support human interaction. Most of the creation of values moves to illegality and many values are just not created.

That or land grabbing. The poor in those countries don't have access to the real property legal system the way we do here in the US and western Europe so many if not most are basically squatting on the property they live in. It was purchased, etc but exists in a sort of extra legal property system with no title or deed. So when there's a major natural catastrophe like an earthquake or tsunami, big business can move in and purchase the land within the legal system, thus ousting the people that have lived on it for generations. They can then build a factory or fancy resort on it.

source: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CW0MA1S/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Your writing is full of contradictions. You should think more about what you write.

>Of course, tackling world hunger won't be easy. It's a multi faceted issue ranging from over production, artificial scarcity and much more. But I personally think that capitalism, the race for ever higher profits, actively hampers against tackling the issue. It's not profitable to feed starving people. The UN world food programme feeds 100 million people every year on a budget of 7 billion. It will take 40 billion to feed all the people who are hungry and eliminate world hunger by 2030. But it's not profitable to do so so I guess they have to starve sadly.

UN will do no such thing. It is one of the most corrupt organization and is one of the reasons why there is the status quo. It legitimizes the tyrannic regimes and huge portions of their "help" ends up in the swiss accounts of the dictators.

Capitalism does not tell you what to do. It allows you to do what to do as long as you are not violating other people's lives. Not that only fraction of people are interested in higher profits. You are not. Why should you be able to command others what they should do or wish?

Feeding people is profitable in the west why not in poor countries? You also misunderstand what profit is. Profit is simply creating something while you output more value than you put in. That is unequivocally a good thing.

>Also, them failing capitalism is... not true? They succeeded at capitalism. It is just more profitable to keep the people poor and unable to resist foreign exploitation rather than bringing themself up. Look at Nestle stealing people's water to sell it back to them or making mom's dependent on formula so they can sell more. Capitalism has made human suffering profitable. And when they try to lift themselves up while resisting western meddling, you get situations like President Sankara in Burkina Faso or President Allende in Chile. During their presidencies, they achieved impressive improvements in quality of life, economic growth and social justice. How did the West respond to this rejection of their system, as they were leaning towards socialism? Sankara was killed by French forces whilst Allende was overthrown by a CIA backed coup, despite having popular support. The West, under capitalism, overthrew socialist leaders who were improving the lives of people, because they would lose the opportunity to profit from them.

Show me a country that has no respect for property rights and is amazingly rich. How do you square the statement "it pays to keep people poor" with the fact that all the places with high standard of living are much richer and the corporations do exist and are making the money mostly in rich countries? West did not become rich to decide "from now on I am rich" it did produce and gradually built up and that requires certain political bedding and this is what the poor countries generally do not have. I recommend this book.

I am not familiar too much with Allende but I doubt it was CIA who did the coup. Cursory reading shows that it was local army. I grew up in a socialist country and everybody "supported" the socialists until they did not have to. It would be great to get some CIA support back then. I am all for western countries supporting the local resistance in overthrowing oppressive governments. Of course US should be careful who they back. But thumbs up for getting rid of Allende. I am suspicious of your claims of "impressive improvements in quality of life" since we had the same claims about Venezuela and we all know how that ended up. What evidence do you have to support the claims of impressive improvements of quality of life?

Not familiar with Nestle but it is likely not stealing people's water. It is very likely not their water. Water that is in the nature generally isn not potable. It has to be processed and that costs money. It makes sense someone owns it.

>They were the victims of oppression under colonialism and continue to feel the fallout of imperialism, so I guess they did lose the capitalism race.

Why are there countries that suffered the same and were able to surpass this and grow? The southeast Asia was colonized by Japanese well in the 20th century. The South Korea today is a rich country.

Hong Kong just 50 years ago was poor and had like 30k people. Today (until China took it) was a bustling place one of the richest on the planet.

>Now that's all well and good. I came to the realization that profiting of people's suffering, despite having done nothing to end up there, is a characteristic of capitalism.

This is just evasion of reality. Nobody is profiting of their suffering. Selling them stuff is trade and trade is mutually beneficial. This is basic economics stuff. They did something to end up there. They did not built a society that would allow them to get rich. Note that places like Britain and USA had to do it without there being anybody rich. These poor countries have to just replicate what works and they (for whatever reason) are not doing that.

>If the US is not capitalist, what is it? I would like to know. Also capitalism has been the motivator for the slave trade, western imperialism and colonialism, which we all know are bad things, so I think it is an instigator in wars, not preventor.

Every western state today is a mixture of capitalism and socialism. USA and many european states are inching towards fascism. I already gave you the explanation using the definition of capitalism you provided. If the measure is private property. How mcuh would have to be privately owned for it to be considered capitalism? Is it 1%? 10% 90% 100%?

The "capitalism has been the motivator for the slave trade" is just you being ignorant of history. This is a claim that recently 1619 project made and it was throughly debunked by historians. One of the most prominent thinkers in the South was George Ftzhugh (note that even WIkipedia got this right). He was not only a thinker he also was part of forming omse wartime policies. He despised capitalism and advocated for abandoning it. He constantly attacked Locke, Smith and other thinkers who advocated for capitalism. I think it is a funny coincidence that he advocated for slavery based on "surplus value" which he worked out 10 years before Marx. You should read something that criticizes 1619 not blindly believe it. These people just lie for ideological reasons.

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>If you're playing by the definition if even a single thing is publicly owned then it isn't capitalism, then I think you're just in denial at this point. Arguing like "capitalism has never been tried before."

Yes. In a sense. The left is playing this card all the time and I think that is fine. Also we are not talking about 1%. US gov spends some 50% of all the money the econmy produces. It owns huge swaths of land (west of missisipi it is like 70%). The US economy is heavily regulated etc. I am not saying that US does not have aspects of capitalism but it is ever shrinking and one has to be careful to distinguish. The left crowd generally calls capitalism everything it does not like sometimes to grotesque ends (like Richard Wolff).