Capitalist Solutions

Promoting capitalism as the only moral and practical social system for man!

Capitalism vs poverty

Letter to the South China Morning Post by Simon Patkin

I wish to refute all of Jack Muir’s claims out of hand (“Historical ignorance”, July 6); especially that capitalism is somehow destructive. The history of the world shows that the sacrificial philosophies of religion, communism, fascism and environmentalism in the hands of statists have killed tens of millions of people in the last century alone, whilst free markets have lifted more and more out of poverty. Taking things from a global perspective, we can see that capitalism is both moral and practical. Just compare Hong Kong with North Korea or China under Mao.

Further, Mr. Muir completely misunderstands the ethical basis for capitalism, which recognizes a person’s individual rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. Capitalism alone opposes restrictions of these freedoms, whether they are by other individuals or by governments. Indeed many Americans did fight for the abolition of slavery.

As to his claims of historical ignorance about American populations, Mr. Muir is ignoring more important points I made in my original letter. Some post 1960’s academics make a career out of adjusting pre-1492 figures to support conspiracy theories of mass genocide. However, he should check the US Census Bureau, which shows my claims of around 2 million were correct. There were around 2.6 million settlers in the new colonies in 1776, including around 600,000 Indians. Further traditional figures for pre-1492 North American populations showed around 1 million Indians, not the astonishing 40 million that Mr. Muir claims.

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