Maaja
10th October 2002, 18:01
Probabaly it was sent to me to convince me that capitalism is good and communism bad.
Wednesday, October 09, 2002
By Radley Balko
At about the same time a hodgepodge of protesters
descended on Washington, D.C. last month to protest
capitalism, globalization and free trade, the United
Nations and the Institute for International Studies
released a triad of studies declaring that humanity
is, for the most part, in the best condition it’s ever
been.
World poverty is down. Income gaps are narrowing. And
the reasons for all of this are, to the protesters’
chagrin, none other than capitalism, globalization and
free trade.
The first study is the 2002 edition of the United
Nations’ annual "Human Development Report." The report
informs us that as of 2002, 140 of the world’s 200
countries -- 70 percent -- now hold multi-party
elections. Eighty-two countries representing 57
percent of the human population are fully democratic,
the highest percentage in human history. After a
century in which totalitarianism -- Nazism, fascism
and communism -- killed more than 170 million people,
a clear move toward universal political freedom is
afoot.
The numbers on world economics are good, too. World
poverty fell more than 20 percent between 1990 and
1999, a decade of aggressive globalization. The number
of world Internet users is expected to double by 2005
to one billion. In those regions of the world most
sympathetic to liberal reform, the news is even
better. In ten years, poverty halved in in East Asia
and the Pacific regions.
Since 1990, 800 million people have gained new access
to improved water supplies, and 750 million to
improved sanitation. In the last 30 years, infant
mortality rates have dropped from 96 deaths per 1,000
live births to just 56.
A study from the Institute for International Studies
boasts even more good news. The author of that study,
Surjit S. Bhalla, employed accounting statistics based
on individual incomes instead of national incomes,
which allowed him to more accurately measure wealth
and poverty rates. Bhalla concludes that the world
poverty rate has declined even more dramatically than
the U.N. reports, from 44 percent in 1980 to just 13
percent in 2000. Bhalla attributes the decline to
progress in China and India, the two most populous
nations in the world, and two nations that have made
significant moves toward more economic freedom in the
last 20 years.
But not all the news is good. Huge swaths of humanity
still fester in abject poverty. Not surprisingly, the
regions witnessing the most poverty also happen to
house those cultures and regimes most averse to
markets and capitalism -- sub-Saharan Africa and the
Arab world.
Twenty countries in sub-Saharan Africa are poorer now
than they were in 1990. Another 23 are, astoundingly,
poorer than they were in 1975. Three hundred million
people in the region now live in extreme poverty.
Sub-Saharan Africa also scores lower on the "freedom
index" than any region on the planet.
A third study, conducted by a group of Arab scholars
and also released by the U.N., draws similar
conclusions about the Arab world. It offers a scathing
indictment of Arab culture’s self-imposed isolation
from international markets and of its oppression of
political and economic freedom. The report points out
that over the last 20 years, the Arab world has
produced the second lowest per-capita growth rates in
income in the world. Total productivity in the Arab
world actually declined between 1960 and 2000, a
period that saw the rise of militant Islam and,
paradoxically, unprecedented economic growth almost
everywhere else.
The last half-century has seen an Arab world
increasingly hostile to capitalism, particularly to
property rights and trade. Consequently, the last
half-century has also seen an Arab world lapsing
further and further behind the rest of humanity. Arab
industrial labor output was at 32 percent of North
American output in 1960. By 1990, it had fallen to
just 19 percent.
The Atlantic Monthly points out that since the ninth
century, the Arab world has translated only about
100,000 books into Arabic. That’s equal to the number
of books the nation of Spain translates in one year.
Consequently, the Arab world is suffering a "brain
drain," as its most promising minds migrate to
societies more conducive to learning. Arab scholars
have left in droves to pursue academic freedom in
other countries. An astounding 51 percent of Arab
adolescents told U.N. researchers they wanted to
emigrate.
These studies, taken together, paint a telling picture
of the state of humanity, and of what steps we can
take to make it even better. When countries embrace
free markets, trade, and political freedom, they
thrive. Incomes grow. Lifespans lengthen. Social
maladies mend. When nations isolate themselves from
international markets, when they deny citizens free
elections, free press, and property, they falter.
Incomes wane. Disease and famine swell. Strife looms.
Communist and isolated North Korea, for example, has
lost 10 percent of its population -- two million
people -- to famine since 1995. And that’s in an
allegedly "developed" country.
Anti-globalization protesters can rail all they like
against the evils of capitalism, international markets
and classical liberalism. But the numbers are
unmistakable. Wealth is the only remedy for poverty,
and capitalism is the only real way to create wealth.
Wednesday, October 09, 2002
By Radley Balko
At about the same time a hodgepodge of protesters
descended on Washington, D.C. last month to protest
capitalism, globalization and free trade, the United
Nations and the Institute for International Studies
released a triad of studies declaring that humanity
is, for the most part, in the best condition it’s ever
been.
World poverty is down. Income gaps are narrowing. And
the reasons for all of this are, to the protesters’
chagrin, none other than capitalism, globalization and
free trade.
The first study is the 2002 edition of the United
Nations’ annual "Human Development Report." The report
informs us that as of 2002, 140 of the world’s 200
countries -- 70 percent -- now hold multi-party
elections. Eighty-two countries representing 57
percent of the human population are fully democratic,
the highest percentage in human history. After a
century in which totalitarianism -- Nazism, fascism
and communism -- killed more than 170 million people,
a clear move toward universal political freedom is
afoot.
The numbers on world economics are good, too. World
poverty fell more than 20 percent between 1990 and
1999, a decade of aggressive globalization. The number
of world Internet users is expected to double by 2005
to one billion. In those regions of the world most
sympathetic to liberal reform, the news is even
better. In ten years, poverty halved in in East Asia
and the Pacific regions.
Since 1990, 800 million people have gained new access
to improved water supplies, and 750 million to
improved sanitation. In the last 30 years, infant
mortality rates have dropped from 96 deaths per 1,000
live births to just 56.
A study from the Institute for International Studies
boasts even more good news. The author of that study,
Surjit S. Bhalla, employed accounting statistics based
on individual incomes instead of national incomes,
which allowed him to more accurately measure wealth
and poverty rates. Bhalla concludes that the world
poverty rate has declined even more dramatically than
the U.N. reports, from 44 percent in 1980 to just 13
percent in 2000. Bhalla attributes the decline to
progress in China and India, the two most populous
nations in the world, and two nations that have made
significant moves toward more economic freedom in the
last 20 years.
But not all the news is good. Huge swaths of humanity
still fester in abject poverty. Not surprisingly, the
regions witnessing the most poverty also happen to
house those cultures and regimes most averse to
markets and capitalism -- sub-Saharan Africa and the
Arab world.
Twenty countries in sub-Saharan Africa are poorer now
than they were in 1990. Another 23 are, astoundingly,
poorer than they were in 1975. Three hundred million
people in the region now live in extreme poverty.
Sub-Saharan Africa also scores lower on the "freedom
index" than any region on the planet.
A third study, conducted by a group of Arab scholars
and also released by the U.N., draws similar
conclusions about the Arab world. It offers a scathing
indictment of Arab culture’s self-imposed isolation
from international markets and of its oppression of
political and economic freedom. The report points out
that over the last 20 years, the Arab world has
produced the second lowest per-capita growth rates in
income in the world. Total productivity in the Arab
world actually declined between 1960 and 2000, a
period that saw the rise of militant Islam and,
paradoxically, unprecedented economic growth almost
everywhere else.
The last half-century has seen an Arab world
increasingly hostile to capitalism, particularly to
property rights and trade. Consequently, the last
half-century has also seen an Arab world lapsing
further and further behind the rest of humanity. Arab
industrial labor output was at 32 percent of North
American output in 1960. By 1990, it had fallen to
just 19 percent.
The Atlantic Monthly points out that since the ninth
century, the Arab world has translated only about
100,000 books into Arabic. That’s equal to the number
of books the nation of Spain translates in one year.
Consequently, the Arab world is suffering a "brain
drain," as its most promising minds migrate to
societies more conducive to learning. Arab scholars
have left in droves to pursue academic freedom in
other countries. An astounding 51 percent of Arab
adolescents told U.N. researchers they wanted to
emigrate.
These studies, taken together, paint a telling picture
of the state of humanity, and of what steps we can
take to make it even better. When countries embrace
free markets, trade, and political freedom, they
thrive. Incomes grow. Lifespans lengthen. Social
maladies mend. When nations isolate themselves from
international markets, when they deny citizens free
elections, free press, and property, they falter.
Incomes wane. Disease and famine swell. Strife looms.
Communist and isolated North Korea, for example, has
lost 10 percent of its population -- two million
people -- to famine since 1995. And that’s in an
allegedly "developed" country.
Anti-globalization protesters can rail all they like
against the evils of capitalism, international markets
and classical liberalism. But the numbers are
unmistakable. Wealth is the only remedy for poverty,
and capitalism is the only real way to create wealth.