Spending to excess is not closely related to the issue of poverty. If wealthy people spent less it might cause more poverty. Whether it does or does not there isn't an kind of clear automatic connection. It wasn't Imelda Marco's buying of shoes that kept her country relatively poor.
Its a simple mathematical equation. There are finite dollars in the world. If one group is spending in excess, then there are less dollars for the rest. In the case of the Phillippines, the country generates so much wealth. Marcos and her friends were consuming a much greater %tage of that wealth than the rest of the country.
Another example......its like the US consuming 25% of the world's resources with only 4% of the world's population. These are numbers that the right conveniently wants to ignore.
The libertarian point is generally not to ignore poverty or argue that it should be ignored but rather than more freedom and more economic growth will give you the best chance to get a serious long term reduction in poverty.
More freedom and economic growth will not do the trick.......at least not alone. We have a premanent underclass of poverty in this class.....in which having food daily is a major struggle. Capitalism has not been able to cure us of that underclass.
Capitalism extends this ability beyond the ruling class because it gives wealth and freedom to more people. Giving wealth and freedom to more people is a good thing not a bad one.
No, it isn't a good thing if people are starving.
The wealth produced by free market system makes it less likely that people will starve.
That is just not true. We have been a capitalist country for centuries and we continue to have people starve. There are people making minimum wage at their jobs who live in their cars. At best, the capitalist system provides a barely subsistence level living for a sizable minority of the population. It just kills me how the right ignores this issue. It was seen very graphically in New Orleans after Katrina and now the right is shouting "shutup about New Orleans". You want to make out that these people are slackers but many of them worker harder in a week then you work in a year.
Capitalism thrives on growing consumption. In a world where resources are finite, that is not a good thing. That is why at some point capitalism will be forced to evolve into something else or humanity will experience another crash.
Perhaps our disagreement is so fundamental as to not even allow for us to really understand the other person's viewpoint. I was pretty sure we wouldn't agree but I thought that we could at least understand each other. That last statement makes me doubt it. But I guess the effort is still worth it.
If a resource runs low a capitalist system will make it more expensive and reduce its consumption. It is one of the simplest most efficient ways of allocating resources whether they are abundant or rare, and it would deal with a decline in a resource better than any other existent, historical, or proposed system.
Yes, our disagreement is very fundamental as evidenced by your statement highlighted in bold. I do not want to wait til the capitalist system kicks in after we have depleted a resource to the point where it is in short supply. It pontentially could cause huge economic dislocations and unnecessary hardache. That is why people plan for the future instead of consuming heedlessly.
Excess, excess excess........the moniker of capitalism.....it is at the core of our differences and the fatal flaw in capitalism. It suggests the belief that a solution will be found no matter what even when there are facts to the contrary. It suggests an abundance that is almost infinite. It suggests an attitude to consume now and the future will take care of itself. Its why global warming is such a hard concept for the right to consider. Its why capitalism must be replaced with an economic system that is more sensitive to the limitations we all face.
Also why resources are finite at any given time, they increase over time. We find more resources, including things that were not considered resources before. Yes there is an absolute limit, there is only so much energy and matter in the universe, and there is much less that we will probably ever be able to use. But absent a third world war, or a titanic natural disaster (like a massive impact from space that wipes out civilization), we are likely to be able to use more resources than we do now 1, 10, 500, 10,000, and a million years from now.
You assume a great deal......and I suspect that will make an ass out of you.....probably long after you are dead. Global oil reserves are not increasing; in fact, they are being revised downwards. Supply and demand are in such equilibrium nearly any geopolitical event causes the price of crude to spike up. So far, the economic dislocations have been relatively minor. However, international and internal disputes over the resource are becoming more common.......a couple of weeks ago it was the Ukraine and Russia and Congressional infighting over the ANWR, last week it was internal fighting in Nigeria, and this week its Georgia and Russia. This is likely to get much worse before it gets better. And oil is not the only commodity that is becoming less plentiful.
And who do we have weaning us off oil......an incompetent Republican who doesn't have a clue and whose best friends are in the oil business making millions. Meanwhile, we are fighting a senseless war in Iraq in the hopes of preserving our connection to their oil.
Yes, Tim, our differences are very fundamental.
ted
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