Resolved: Capitalism Has Been The Exclusive Liberator From Grinding Poverty

As this debate format permits only a certain amount of written words, I will take the unsual step of acknowledging my opponent`s arguments and will not drop them as I would be considered to do by not responding. I make this limited rebuttal to allow him space to make a more detailed analysis of my other examples without making new points that would demand space in their rebuttal. Responding therefore to a few of his points, I hope to make a few non-controversial explanations that will not warrant too much of his writing space should he choose to reply. First, as to why I chose the time period I did: As I am focusing on capitalism and free trade, the pre-19th century era, which was marked as I said by mercantilism, is interesting only as a proof through negative means rather than positives, as I could show the effects of an economic system marked by the use of military force, subsidies and tariffs. Free trade did not exist in the era of mercantilism. The country with relatively free trade policies was the Netherlands. "In spite of the considerable amount of internal and external trade that developed in and among the European powers between the eleventh and seventeenth centuries, very little of it 2008 Free Market Forum 9 could be characterized as “free trade.” Internal and external markets were highly controlled and regulated throughout Europe with a few exceptions (Holland)." (https://www.hillsdale.edu...). You`ll note that the Netherlands, in 1800 as the Batavian republic and yet untouched in its mainland by invasion nor blockaded as part of Napoleon's continental system, is far ahead of the rest of Europe in economic prosperity. In short, the challenge is that which is in the section labelled "The Challenge". "That the only cases in which the masses have escaped the kind of grinding poverty that the overwhelming majority of people have been in since the dawn of time, which includes lack of access to clean water, lack of adequate nutrition, and so on so forth, have been when they have had capitalism and largely free trade." But in the spirit of fellowship and appreciation for your acceptance of this topic, I won`t consider you to have dropped the point about free trade, an integral part of the challenge. Second, of course I can attribute the industrial revolution`s success with capitalism! Consider the invention of the first practical steam engine, made by Thomas Newcomen. (https://en.wikipedia.org...) Was it made with the funding of a government bureau? Was it made by endowment of a non-profit to be used freely for the benefit of mankind? Was it funded by a disbursement from the Crown`s purse? Of course not! It was made by Thomas Newcomen with money obtained either through his merchant family (equity financing) or ironmonger`s business (retained earnings). I submit that few if any of the pertinent inventions causing or advancing the industrial revolutions were made on any other economic terms than private individuals with privately owned money not derived from state sources unless obtained as salary or other compensation and not as a research grant, and that these individuals subsequently sold these inventions. That`s what capitalism is, and I propose that if these inventors knew with certainty at the beginning (as if the government had said so) they would get no or incommensurate return out of their investment of time and money into their invention they hardly would have invested the resources into making them. People do in fact precede pounds, but people are also strongly motivated by pounds. You speak of social innovations and I concur, but from the fact that social changes set the stage for and greatly facilitated capitalism does not follow the notion that capitalism was not the liberator of the masses from destitution. The doctor administers the antidote and both can be said to have cured the patient, however we do not say that doctors in a general sense are the cure to poisoning, but antidotes. Third, I propose capitalism and free trade as being the ideal system not out of philosophical attractiveness, which I admit they possess only in a way that appeals to a libertarian few, but out of its telos. It has accomplished what the Roman emperors, popes, and Chinese dynasties could not; it has ended poverty essentially in an entire continent and continues to free the poor. Rather than redistribute a very small portion of wealth by force amongst an enormous population to try and combat poverty that way, it had the novel idea of radically increasing the wealth, to the point that it became impossible for the poor not to be participants in it to a far greater extent in absolute terms than they ever had before. Indeed, they were the chief beneficiaries of technology. The rich in Ancient Greece had no need of CDs, they could simply summon the greatest minstrels to play for them. The rich in ancient Rome had no need of Wikipedia, they had access to an enormous corpus of information in their private libraries. The great kings of Europe had no need of guns, they could marshal through their means an army equipped with exorbitantly expensive equipment and crush any peasant uprising. The emperors of China had no need for air conditioning, they could compel slaves to fan them, and the list goes on and on and on. Therefore, Marxism`s claim to the immorality or "oppressiveness" of capitalism is not interesting in light of capitalism's empirical benefits for the poor and hence when I suspended that digression in my challenge to this debate. Your US example I will address in a future rebuttal to provide you with space.