The Politically Incorrect Guide To Ending Poverty

One thing tacitly not mentioned in the article is the guns and the Navy of the British Empire that made the Hong Kong deal work.<p>If any country decides to cede sovereignty over some territory, they should agree that the guest power will asserts its sovereignty over it. And it has to be full way, without option to be undone after next coup, mood swing or populist elections. And that can be guaranteed only with implicit threat of violence from superior power.<p>Anyway the big problem these days is actually finding a progressive nation willing to commit to such threats.

<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429</a>

Also worth reading a rebuttal: <a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/from-cromer-to-romer-and-back-again.html" rel="nofollow">http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/from-cr...</a>

As an immigrant here in the United States, I feel like I must be totally out of touch. How is this politically incorrect?

OK,<p>We have many countries already competing on the world market by trying to offer little regulation and lots of flexibility for investors.<p>How's that been working?<p>Are Chinese workers going up towards American standards? Or are Americans moving towards Chinese standards?<p>If Africa could also compete here, would living standards going further down or further up?<p>What do you think?

Anyone know how the teenagers studying under streetlamps charge their mobile phones?

This has been posted before. And no it wont end poverty, it is essentially a plan to sell licenses for private dictatorships.

Capitalism is the antidote for poverty. This is proven by the simple example of any poor person- whether US born, india born, chinese born, etc, who starts a business-- any business-- and grows it to the point that they leave enough money for their kids to be lazy and non-productive. The kids might not be reared right, but they are no longer in poverty.<p>The opponent of capitalism is also the cause of poverty. The opponent of capitalism is collectivism. Or put another way, government. Any entity that takes by force (eg: taxes, regulations, bribes, etc.) naturally pushes out businesses that take by free trade (eg: sales, barter, etc.)<p>The more you have of one the less you have of the other. Notice how there were many postal services in the US and they were growing and competing and bettering themselvs until the US government decided to give itself a monopoly on first class mail delivery. As a result we no longer have a vibrant postal industry, and instead have the very poor US postal service. Why did the government give itself a monopoly? To be able to censor political tracts being sent thru the mail.<p>How many of you knew that? I'd bet most of you believe the US government provides mail because it wouldn't be economical otherwise. Ignoring for the fact that taking money by force doesn't change whether something is "economical" or not, note that the pony express survived and thrived in a time when people were much poorer and much further apart-- transportation wise-- than they are now.<p>So, obviously the fallacy that "without government who would deliver the mail?" is nonsense. We have an example in mail, but it applies to everything else- justice, roads, and soon, heatlthcare.<p>Remember when you didn't have to be politically connected to get treated for cancer? Good times.<p>Whatever method of organization, city-states, charter-cities, seasteads, a great frontier like the US was-- the essential quality is how much regulation and how much government there was, vs, how much capitalism is allowed to take hold.<p>Russia, China and India are all examples of way too much government, and all three have resulted in a great flourishing-- not without problems or corruption, but a benefit on the balance-- with the removal of this draconian level of control.