[simplefish]

It's easy to stand on the sidelines and hurl brickbats at a system (global capitalism) which has raised more people out of grinding poverty in a shorter time than everything else we've ever done in all of recorded history combined.

It's harder to offer real suggestions to actually improve the lives of the poor. And I see you don't.

Your outrage may make you feel good, but it helps no one but you. And that makes it selfish.

[jahaja]

Your arguments are quite flawed as they could be applied in favour of feudalism or plain cattle slavery. Also, "Communist" China has raised quite a lot of people out of povert as well. Should we therefore attribute this to state-communism (or state-capitalism)? Of course not.

For me, this is fundamentally an ethical question. Is this wrong and should one work to change it? I think that when a wage labourer barely, if at all, earns enough for food and shelter it is not much different than slavery. As such, I think it's wrong and that it should be changed.

Furthermore, I can't accept the notion that one has to have a thoughout solution to a complex problem to be able to express ones views. A good start to achieving change is to express when one thinks something is wrong and to build from there. The process of achieving change is naturally much more complex than simply expressing ones view and as such it would be irrational to have that as a requirement to speak.

Fundamental change, which may or may not be needed in this case, is often deeply political and such solutions, even if detailed and serious - albeit subjective, is too often just discarded without any thought or arguments.

[simplefish]

> Your arguments are quite flawed as they could be applied in favour of feudalism or plain cattle slavery.

Not at all. I could make some solid suggestions for proven ways of improving on feudalism or slavery. But I don't know of any likely ideas to help Bangladesh beyond what they're already doing. More to the point, RodericDay apparently didn't have any either.

If I say Apple knows a few things about global supply chain management, and thus it might be a good idea not to criticise them as clowns who couldn't run a lemonade stand, it does not follow that I disagree with all criticism of every business everywhere just because my arguments could, in theory, have been made about other companies. Because that particular argument would be wrong applied to almost any other company.

> Also, "Communist" China has raised quite a lot of people out of povert as well.

That was the precise process I was referring to, and as I"m sure you're aware (hence your scare quotes), it was via the operations of modern global capitalism, very similar to what is even now beginning to take place in Bangladesh and elsewhere in the Asian periphery.

> I can't accept the notion that one has to have a thoughout solution to a complex problem to be able to express ones views.

To be sure. But RodericDay went far further than that. First, he didn't have the faintest suggestion of a solution; he didn't even suggest an avenue to explore. And second, he wasn't just "expressing his views"; he was condemning the system and its supporters in the harshest possible language. There is a difference between suggesting that it would be nice if Bangladesh could improve even faster, and saying that people who are pleased with their progress are pro-slavery.

[jahaja]

My point is that raising people out of poverty should not be used as a measurement of a systems viability and success. As such, the unfair state-capitalism of China should not be praised as a viable system of the future just because it succeeded to raise so many people out of poverty.

[simplefish]

> My point is that raising people out of poverty should not be used as a measurement of a systems [...] success.

I have no words.

[jahaja]

Why? Do you believe that?