[botswana99]

This is too full of Silicon Valley VC language. ugh

Go to the source materials.

- Rational Optimist. Matt Ridley

- The Better Angels of Our Nature. Steve pinker

- Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. Johan Norberg

- the capitalist manifesto: why the global free market will save the world. Norberg

- Wizard and the prophet. Charles Mann

- Factfulness. Hans rosling

Or, just look at the data

  http://ourworldindata.org/

  http://www.gapminder.org/

[greenie_beans]

> the capitalist manifesto: why the global free market will save the world

pretty crazy they'd put a fallacy in the title of their book

[botswana99]

read the book.

Overall, since the 1990s total global inequality (inequality across all individuals in the world) declined ...

In 1990, 36% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty. By 2019, this number had fallen to 9.2%.

It's not a fallacy ... it's reality

[NoGravitas]

And most of that elimination of extreme poverty? In China. Now, I suppose you can consider Dengism capitalism, if you ignore the fact that it's markets and capital under controlled conditions being used to build up industrial capacity for the transition to communism, but hey. Whatever definitions let you sleep at night.

[greenie_beans]

what is the source of this data?

the fallacy is that global free markets are exclusive to capitalism. we're trading with china, and aren't they supposed to be socialist?

and i'll add to my reading list to challenge my bias!

[goatlover]

How is it a fallacy? Do you know that it won't?

[nl]

I think the big criticism with The Capitalist Manifesto is that it was essential the guiding philosophy in the late-1990's to early 2010s where the belief was that building a strong trade with China based on capitalist principles would lead to political change there.

It's impossible to say whether or not it is a fallacy of course, but this is a criticism that does need addressing.

The other major criticism is that it doesn't take into account externalities. It was written in the 1950s, before the birth of the modern environmental movement, but non-the-less the effect of unbound lassize-fair capitalism was understood and the book could do more to address this.

For me (as is common in political/economic trade offs) it's enough to say that the book makes some good points that seem more true than false, and there is enough data to show that it does work much of the time.