This graph is like the problem of evil for anticapitalists.
https://twitter.com/waitbutwhy/status/1404456376068362240?s=19
I have plenty of issues with “capitalism” and think it should be even more regulated than it is, but you shown me this graph in 1900 and I’d assume the dreams of all reformers in history had been realized.
How much of the gain in life expectancy is owed to progress in science and decreased infant mortality?
A lot, but that’s an important and valuable (and society wide) thing.
You are not showing at all how capitalism did that. Public universities and government are not capitalism. The green revolution was not capitalism. Most vaccines were not capitalism. Most sanitation was not capitalism.
This is the flip side, which is why significant work remains, especially in the US.
https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1099719770612453377?s=19
My concern is just being accurate. I’m no fan of capitalism, but reality always has the final vote, and I don’t think most anticapitalists are particularly interested in reality.
Not really, scale matters. And those other countries are capitalist, they just have universal hc.
No. Firstly improvements in infant mortality rates account for much of that (it’s a commonly held fallacy that people used to die much younger); secondly life expectancy alone isn’t a good metric for measuring the fairness of societies.
A bottom 1% capitalist country might want to extend the lives of its workers so as to pay pensions at a later age and have them working long hours for low wages for more years. I doubt those workers would think they’re living in a good society.
ETA Louis also pointed out the infant mortality factor - largely from public-funded research and health programmes etc. not generally from the entrepreneurial side so beloved of capitalism advocates.
Has there ever been a country that wasn’t capitalist that wasn’t a complete wreck?
.
Waat?
According to your graph ‘capitalism’ popped in to existence in 1900 or so, so yes.
I don’t think that’s accurate.
The version of capitalism that lefties hate, with large businesses influencing society, did.
People think capitalism = technology. Technology advances. That happens in socialism, communism and capitalism. People learn stuff.
New kind of guy:
Watching a train slowly edge towards a cliff with no signs of even kind of slowing down, “I bet anti capitalists couldn’t have come up with this.”
Not really.
I’d say what popped in around 1900 and continues were forms of economic and political liberalism combined with forms of bottom up power (if all the kids in the village or fish in the lake die, there are avenues to be heard and for redress). Again, however, capitalism ain’t paying me to shill, I’m all for continued improvement and an emphasis on things like happiness indexes. I have no dog in the fight other than skepticism about simple answers.
One way to look at the world is where literally everything is trying to kill and eat everything else. Harnessing the efforts of individuals for the general welfare isn’t a given.
I mean like, I certainly don’t have a compelling answer for, “what’s the best way to measure how good humanity is doing?” I don’t even have a answer for, “Should we be putting a bunch of effort into the continuation of our species?”
Yea, we should probably do what we can to make things better for everyone, and we should probably do what we can to make sure most giant metropolises won’t have to move inland in the next 500 years. Beyond that though.