But you have to consider the size of India. I don't know the facts off hand but I've heard that India has a middle class larger than the population of the US and at the same time there is increasing upward mobility compared to when India was an economic basketcase. Buidling a middle class and improving the standard of living are critical to building a successful stable country and society. If you don't think so just look at how Singapore and the other Asian tigers along with the West European countries succeeded. They did it by a dedication to doing those exact things. Anyway while India is lagging behind the PRC in the percentage of malnourished children its doing much better now than when its economy was primarily socialists. Yes India has a way to go but both there and in the PRC most people are much more better off since they've liberalized their economies than they were under command economies. Especially the PRC. These states are only commie in name alone. Considering Deng Xiaping declared "To get rich is glorious!" Communism is about as alive in the PRC as much as Feudalism is alive in England.
Well, size matters if you only compare India to Cuba, but not China. Look I hate to turn this thread into India bashing debate, which is not my intention at all. My contention has been that capitalism isn't necessarily superior to socialism/communism especially when it comes to reducing poverty/hunger in developing countries. Moreover, democracy and freedom don't necessarily lead to a just society -- you can't boast your economic success within certain class while tens of millions underclass children are left suffering at the same time. Some authoritarian regimes may on the other hand be in much better positions to handle the situations such as helping the underpriviliged overcome hardships.
The success of economy development comes from effective economy policy, if the leader from communist country can implement effective economy policy based on what is happening in their own country, they are likely to succeed. On the other hand, if a leader from a democractic country cannot executive the right economic policy, they will fail. The key of economic development for developing country is their leader ought to formulate and implement the right the economic policy based on the reality of his country instead of following every general international economic rules. The success should have little to do with what types of government is but how effective their leader can implement the right economy policy for its own country.
In my opinion, many of them just don't want to admit it. Just like I can't praise LeBron or Kobe without a but, no matter how many props I give them, simply because I don't like them as person. I am not saying Western people dislike Chinese people, but some of them are very sensitive of anything the word "communist" related.
Wnes, whiles China has made huge progress in economic development, we should not ignore its poor human rights records either. Economic development does not justity China's poor human rights records, economic development and human right can con-exist in all countries, developed or not.
We should not judge India's success based on what's happening in China. Sure you can compare those two, but you just cannot judge. Based on what's happening in India in recenty 15 years, I believe their leader is doing a fabulous job in devloping that country's economy. Every developing countries has it own issues, the government of India is trying its best to solve those issues, it just taking times. Bashing India based on China's success is pointless.
Point taken, but the thread is not on PRC's human rights record. The 'right' of poor/starved children to nutrition trumps the 'right' of middle class citizens to accumulating more wealth any day in my opinion.
I am not saying between India and China, which economic model is better than the other in terms of growth and potential. That's for much broader discussion and debate. The point I've been trying to make is that capitalism/democracy isn't inherently just and moral, whereas communism/authoritarianism isn't inherently evil, as the success/failure of fighting poverty/hunger for the poor kids in developing countries like China, India, and Cuba has clearly demonstrated.
I would put the record of primarily capitalistic systems versus primarily socialistic systems for which ones have brought done more to reduce poverty and hunger head to head anyday. Just looking at China's own history they've fared much better in the 26 years since they've gone towards Capitalism than in the 31 years during which they were mostly Communist. The same applies to India too which was had its own period of socialism. Command economies on a large scale just don't work. There are too many variables for central planning to take into account. The very nature of centralized economic planning just invites corruption and mismanagement. Practically every self-proclaimed Communist country has learned and even the old die hards like North Korea have recognized their needs to be some level of market. So while yes Capitalism has led to the Great Depression, Argentinian fiscal collapse and many other bad things those pale in comparison to the horrors unleashed under the Great Leap Forward and other attempts at large scale communist economics.
As systems there is no good or evil about them but there is a matter of practicality and as I said before large scale command economies don't work. You would have better luck at trying large scale weather control. The success of those countries has only come about due to them liberalizing their economies. moving away from Communism to embrace a signifigant amount of Capitalism. All three of those countries in the past few decades have undertaken signifigant reform to move away from central planning to allow for greater entrepeneurship and foreign investment. The very reason why they are doing so well is that they have more open systems that generate capital in the first place to provide for the needs of their citizens. Most command economies fail to generate or attract capital so even if they have equitable distrubution systems, each to his own needs, they end up running out of capital where everyone ends up starving, see Cambodia in the 1970's. Anyway the idea of each to his own needs has never worked out in practice. Humans are just greedy and a command economy just facilitates for those who do the planning to help themselves to a greater share of the pie, see USSR. You're caught up in the ideological arguments while ignoring the practical arguments. Inherently there's nothing evil or just about Communism, Capitalism or any "ism" there is a question of how well they work given the complex nature of a large scale economy.
Every system today has a tool to manage their central banking system. In effect, they're centralized economic planners. It's also easier for most democracies when they peg their rates on our Fed. Capitalism, the way we practice it, is an extension of powerful CEOs or powerful interest lobbies who seek government protection through subsidies, tax breaks, or bailouts, should these interests' central planners fail to gain on their risk taking. The Chinese government has an enormous opportunity to shift the courses of developing fields. It can build an entirely new infrastructure without grandfathered interests objecting. It has the capital to force funding into sore areas of need. This is made possible by their liberal reforms, but their command economy gives them control over their developing market's interests. Right now, it's far more economical to exploit the poor and the environment. Should the government be held to its word, their focus wouldn't be primarily upon material gain.
The reason that capitalism tends to work better is that it does not try to deny or work against human nature. For example, humas in general are drawn to religion (the majority of the people on earth are religious) but communist countries try to outlaw religion. Human nature tells us to compete for resources, it is passed down from our ancestors who had to compete for food before the advent of agriculture. Communism tells us that we will be given food. Humans are also a bit lazy by nature. Most people will not do more than is required of them, especially if there is no reward for doing so. When you combine these factors in a communist society like the Soviet Union, you get people that don't produce enough, and those in control of the resources taking to much, and that leads to collapse. Pure capitalism without regulation won't work either, because that is like many parts of Africa, where a strongman can take whatever he wants - a society oof might makes right. The best system we have seen so far is a market economy where the rights of individuals are guaranteed, as seen in most of the west to varying degrees.
A central bank is a far far different thing than a command economy. Yes its true central bankers seek to manipulate the money supply which can speed up or slow down the pace of investment and spending but that's not the same as producing a five year plan spelling out how much needs to be produced in most sectors of the economy, how much goods and services are going to costs and who is allowed to buy and sell those goods. I wouldn't call that "Capitalism" since its seeking to use the power of government to affect the market and thus create artificial advantages or disadvantages to one party or the other. Its true that there are no true Capitalistic systems or Communistic systems and to go to either extreme is disastrous. IMO though on a continuum something approaching truer Capitalism is better than something approaching truer Communism. The problem with economies with a large amount of government control is that you are correct they can direct resources to areas that the market might ignore but at the same time that also makes corruption likely since so much control is in the hands of the planners. It also makes bureaucracy very likely too and the combination of both can prove disastrous to having a dynamic economy that can respond to changing supply and demand. The other problem with having signifigant government command of the economy is that it also overrides local interests and in what they perceive as the interests of the whole country. For instance consider how much people complain about the USSC ruling that allowed Bridgeport, CT to use imminent domain to take private property to give to another private interhests if that interests can generate more revenue that is standard practice in command economies. So if an oil company wanted to build a refinery by an estuary that supported local fisherman under a command economy the government would favor that and the local economy and environment be damned. That is exactly the type of thing that happened throughout the Soviet Block, PRC, India and many other countries when they were primarily command economies and is why their environments are terrible.
Sishir, I don't know how you can keep spinning when the UN figures point to the irony, if not an all-out resounding slap in the face to the virtue of democracy-freedom-capitalism (how about DFC in short) -- in combatting child hunger in developing countries, that is. Recall that the very first statement of mine in this thread has a specific reference to humanity. I firmly believe the mission of beating child hunger is a core value in serving humanity. Don't we all have to be physically viable before we seek political freedom and spirituality? I think Dalai Lama agrees with me on this. The undisputed fact is that the extent of DFC (not KFC) is far greater in India than in PRC, the history of DFC is also longer in India. When we throw Cuba into the ring, the comparison is even more stark, since the Castro regime has been facing far more obstacles and hostilities created by the US-led embargo and sanctions. Maybe I should bring this up again, Cuba is not just among the countries cited by UN for their progresses, it leads the entire Latin American region in reducing child hunger, both percentage- and speed-wise. Nobody can honestly put Cuba and DFC in the same domain. Last time I checked, that Elian Gonzalez kid is alive and vibrant in Cuba. Looking back, I think I was overly harsh on SamFisher and StupidMoniker. Relative lack of richness/diversity in dietary options (in India) and advantage of one-child policy (in China) may indeed be very legitimate and non-trivial factors contributing to the disparity in child hunger/malnutrition statistics in the two most populous nations on earth. The fundamental cause, in my opinion, lies in the priority differences each individual government places in their policies. In other words, it has much less to do what political and economic systems under which a country chooses to run, with the assumption that the said country has adequate resouces to feed its people of all backgrounds.
And my point is that you have to recognize that without economic liberalization, embracing a signifigant degree of capitalism, this wouldn't have happened. You seem to be arguing along Cold War lines that the Communist ideology is succeeding while Capitalism is failing when it is anything but. If you are going to argue facts you just need to consider what poverty and hunger figures in the PRC were under 30 years of strict adherence to Communism and what they are with 26 years of embracing economic market liberalization.
