Capitalism Always Wins

Free markets did not promise perfect equality, but they produced the greatest retreat of extreme poverty in human history.

CAPITALISM ALWAYS WINS
By Dr. Nelson Jorge Mosco Castellano

When the debate is stripped of sentimental rhetoric and brought onto the terrain of cold facts, the impact of capitalism on the reduction of poverty is not merely an economic theory; it is probably the greatest humanitarian achievement in history.
The paradox of anti-capitalist discourse is that it usually criticizes the system for inequality, while systematically ignoring that, before the rise of market freedom, the existing equality was the equality of generalized misery.
If we observe this phenomenon rigorously, the transcendental impact of capitalism on the majority rests on three undeniable realities:
The demolition of extreme poverty
For millennia, indigence was the human norm.
Around the year 1820, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and the consolidation of modern capitalism, approximately 90% of the world’s population lived in conditions of extreme poverty.
Today, despite colossal demographic growth, that percentage has fallen to less than 10%.
No international aid program, no confiscatory tax and no statist utopia has ever managed to lift so many people out of misery in such a short time as the opening of markets, respect for private property and freedom of trade.
Capitalism did not redistribute scarcity; it created abundance.
Democratic access to consumer goods
The economist Joseph Schumpeter summarized it brilliantly when he pointed out that the achievement of capitalism does not consist in providing more silk stockings for the queen, but in making them available to factory workers as a reward for decreasing effort.
The greatest beneficiaries of mass production are not the rich — who have always had access to comfort — but the most disadvantaged classes.
Elements that today we consider basic, such as electric light, drinking water, antibiotics, household appliances, mobile phones and the internet, were unthinkable or nonexistent luxuries a century ago.
Capitalist competition and innovation lower costs and raise the quality of life of the majority to levels that the kings of the past could not even dream of.
Social mobility against inherited status
In precapitalist, feudal or mercantilist systems, the destiny of a human being was sealed by birth: whoever was born a serf died a serf.
Capitalism breaks the chains of inherited status and replaces them with dynamic contract and merit.
By decentralizing economic power away from the State and aristocratic castes, the market allows the ingenuity, effort and savings of any individual, however humble his origin, to become legitimate tools of social advancement.
The market does not ask for the entrepreneur’s surname, but for the value of the service he offers to his fellow men.
As serious and liberal economic analyses rightly point out, true compassion is not measured by the number of people who depend on social assistance, but by the number of people who manage to leave it behind thanks to productive employment and their own independence.

Capitalism and extreme poverty.
Innovation, consumption and popular welfare.
Markets, merit and social mobility.

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