Capitalist systems function less well without state protection of investors, lenders, and companies against monopoly, deception, and fraud.
What is the most effective, practical way of raising the wealth of nations? What causes wealth? I have come to think that the dream of democratic socialism is inferior to the dream of democratic capitalism, and that the latter's superiority in actual practice is undeniable.
While capitalist countries have more inequality - they also have more wealth overall.
A term like capitalism is incredibly slippery, because there's such a range of different kinds of market economies.
In essence, capitalist systems are a mechanism by which economies may generate growth in knowledge - with much uncertainty in the process, owing to the incompleteness of knowledge.
Nations that use commodity capitalism as a stepping-stone to a mixed economy based on commodity/intellectual capitalism will most likely become rich.
The Soviet Union was a partial check on capitalist looting in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. However, with the Soviet collapse, capitalist looting intensified during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama regimes.
I think it's hypocritical to complain about the rise of China. For 50 years, we were telling everybody in the world that the big threat was Communism, so now the countries that were Communists are now rampant capitalists - and they're doing very well, in some ways much better than the UK. Well, we asked for it. We told them that's what you have to do, and they're doing it, buying up your biggest hotels in New York. You have to laugh.
The elimination of individual capitalists and the replacement of private capitalism by state capitalism in Russia has not in the least altered the typical helpless and authoritarian character structure of the masses of people.
