Capitalism Will Bring World Peace

I have suspected such an answer from you xris, what can I do to pull you over from the dark side?

First off, Africa has great natural resources. They will be somewhat behind, but they will havethe same chances as the west and Asia.
Lower standard of living means lower wages, which is like a magnet to business.

I think the success of certain Asian economies is more to do with work ethic than IQ.

It's IQ that creates wealth in the 21st century. The reasons the Taiwan and India are economic power houses is that they dont have netural resources, so they had to rely on talent and effort.

By IQ I don't just mean intelligence. It's everything that is of value for knowledge-based work.

I have no wish to deprive you of your own peculiar understanding of certain terms - but if you want to use IQ to refer to skills and talents that may actually have more to do with willingness to work long hours, adopt a high degree of discipline, accept one's place, manual dexterity or company loyalty then you aren't facing up to the real reasons why manufacturing seems to be becoming the preserve of Asian societies.

Based on the incredible generalisations and right-wing utopian agenda of your opening post I have to wonder if you are flattering yourself that knowledge-based work fulfills more roles than simple hard graft and manufacturing - because to face the possibility that admitting the opposite might be true would be to admit that the western world has handed the eastern world the ability to call the shots in the future.

It may turn out that an optimistic model of capitalism's benefits to human relations might be right. However, if it is not the case that technology can be developed to counter the environmental impact of production and consumption then the resulting scarcity of resources will certainly result in great human misery and maybe even sweeping adjustments to our civilisation.

There seem to me to be two polar philosophies at work here:

A) We certainly benefit in the short term from producing and consuming. Thusfar technological advance has kept us comfortable (when it hasn't been making war and genocide easier) so just put your faith in it being able to do so for the future.

B) The comfort afforded to us by our wealth and technology have given rise to an unprecedented rise in population, and a resulting drain on resources used up in our manufacturing processes or poisoned by them, so prepare for an unstable future.

It strikes me that if there is any likelihood of an environmental collapse occuring then curbing production and consumption will be of more benefit to long term human harmony than encouraging it. If people are taught to require and desire resources and resources run out - then we are set at one another's throats. If people are taught to use resources sparingly and they don't run out - we are no worse off than we were before.

I wouldn't say strictly capitalism, but at least trade will bring peace.

This is why, in the other thread, I asked what we (the US, but really any developed nation) would really need an army for if we were to eliminate our own army. It seems that our army largely either starts wars or breeds the resentment that leads to wars.

No nation powerful enough to conquer another developed nation would do so for fear of devastating their own economy. As it concerns the US, there is no nation that can manage these two requirements: 1) They have a standing army strong enough to combat an American national guard or private militia that would be mobilized in the case of invasion 2) They would not suffer devastating consequences to their economy.

Capitalism Will Bring World Peace

You're welcome, and for the record I certainly think right-wing utopianism has a better track record than left-wing utopianism.

The scientific discoveries of the last 100 years are beneficial and impressive on the whole (though note that the last century also utilised science to commit larger wars and greater atrocities than at any other period of history - there were genocides before, but the Nazis could not have wiped out millions without cattle trucks and poison gas, there have been tyrannies before, but Stalin could not have populated his gulags without trains and communication systems).

Anyway - let's agree that it's largely been a pleasurable and beneficial journey for plenty of people around the world and that we can reasonably expect to see greater acheivements in the future.

These benefits were all brought to us by use of scientific method.

What does this same method say to us about the environmental impact of the rather wasteful process which fuels economic growth?

Capitalism, the economic theory based entirely on self-interested competition, will somehow bring an end to armed self-interested competition?

If it's peace you want, go in peace. Act peacefully. Capitalism requires violence - not necessarily physical violence, but necessarily economic violence.

By what definition of "violence" can you call competition "economic violence"?

If I call bull**** will you back up your claim?

Capitalism, or at least the free market system you are likely referring to is necessarily peaceful. Everywhere violence or fraud takes hold, markets break down.

By what definition of "violence" can you call competition "economic violence"? Economic actors compete to convince other economic actors that they can better satisfy their wants. Note that convince necessarily excludes violence.

To me, calling market competition "violent" would be the same as calling debate violent. You conflate confrontation with violence.

True. But that reminds me of the pilot average life span statistic conundrum.
Some years ago, let's say in 1985, a statistic found that commercial pilots have a very low average life span. They were wondering what about being a pilot makes you die young. But the simple reason was that commercial pilots were only around in great numbers since around the sixties. So the only way to get in the average life span statistic was by dying young. Pilots were unlikely to be 90, so statistically commercial pilots died young.
The same with right-wing utopianism. It just wasn't around long enough to have much of a track record.

Yes, I'm saying: Not project todays problems on the future. We will have new solutions and new problems.

Not that it matters, but I think the big increase in murdering ability through technology was the century before.

Well, we still have the potential of an aristocracy who doesn't want to put in the effort to compete in a flat world. The only other way to be on top, is putting every body else down though a Orwellian government.
From Wikipedia:
It was "clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery,
and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared... hunger,
overwork, dirt, illiteracy and disease could be eliminated within a few generations".
However, since the Party wants to maintain a hierarchical society with itself on top,
this real possibility of eliminating poverty and inequality is a deadly threat
rather than something to be desired: "If leisure and security were enjoyed
by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty
would learn to think for themselves"-eventually sweeping away the oligarchy ruling them.
"In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance."

And sadly, they have taken over the education system lock, stock and barrel.

This challenge can also be met with technology, there will be alternatives, just like in 1900 nobody would have expected nuclear energy to become a solution. Well, in many countries we reject it for silly emotional reasons, but France gets 78.8% of it's energy from it.

But in todays world, the US dismantling their military would be devastating, because the bad guys wouldn't. I'm more for 'peace through superior fire-power' for now. I don't think the world as it is today would be nice just because the US stops being mean. But thats a different debate.