I was trying to suggest that capitalist progress might be negative sum
game. The pyramids might be considered to be a monument of human
progress, but they might not be worth is much is the value of the Jewish
labor (if the Jews to build them as slaves) there was expended in
producing them.
Factoring environmental damage in compounds the negativity of the
process.
I was not asserting this negativity as an absolute fact. Just a
suggestion.
Marx, it is true, said that capitalism, as well as slavery, was at a
earlier time an agency of progress.
Still, we need not attribute the benefits of more than comforts and
health to capitalism. I would suspect that most indicators of health
improved more rapidly in Cuba and other areas of Latin America.
We could just as easily say that health and technology would have
increased far more rapidly without capitalism, which acted as a drag on
human welfare.
Such assertions however are unprovable, just as insertion that
capitalism is acting as the engine of human progress.
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
