(July 27, 2013 at 7:09 pm)plaincents822 Wrote:When I said world, I meant world-- i.e. as opposed to the 7 billion people unnecessarily occupying it. It is BECAUSE modern medicine and food growing techniques, along with advanced distribution methods, are so effective that there can be that many people.(July 27, 2013 at 6:53 pm)bennyboy Wrote: By "advanced," you are referring to technology. I don't think our improved technology has benefitted the world much, including almost all the species who have to put up with us.
And technology has benefited our lives in numerous way. Like Fidel said it has it's flaws but ultimately it has done far more good than bad. Advances in medicine are just one example how capitalism has helped. I am by no means saying that advances in medicine are only available in capitalist countries, but it is hard to argue that a large portion of those advances don't.
To the OP though, pure capitalism is bad. If you want an example of pure capitalism at work then all you have to do is look at the illegal drug trade. Or really any illegal, underground, or black market trade. Disputes in business in these pure capitalist markets are typically resolved by violence and death.
However, I kind of feel like there are so many of us that we are dividing up the quality-of-life pie among too many. For example, in the apartments just on my block (I'm in Korea), there are probably about 10,000 people, all of whom either produce stuff we don't need, or who sustain the people who produce stuff we don't need. And after all of that, we're all doing a dance with lung cancer, and Bambi is road kill.
If I look across the street, I see another apartment complex, with another 10,000 people. They live 100 meters away from me, and I'll never even say hi to any of them. They could all just disappear in an alien abduction, and it would be like it never happened.
Except that a couple acres of rainforest would still be standing.
