Is Capitalism Making Life Better?

This Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFxYyXGMfZM

-Seems to debunk the myth that a rising standard of living provides adequate justification for a particular political/economic system. As, (to make an analogy), the rising standards of living in Stalinist Russia were astronomical; in a period of 10 years, Russia was transformed from a largely agrarian peasant-based society to an industrial economy. However, this was done through the use of: coercion, terror, slave labor, murder, secret police, and state-propaganda.

(See the video for additional examples)

If a rising standards of living are the necessary and sufficient conditions for justifying one's economic system, then capitalism AND Stalinism are justified.

I doubt very much that any rational person would consider both economic systems to be justified.

Thoughts anyone?

 

Ah, here too. If you have a bone to pick with capitalism, how about choosing one forum?

 

the poll question is very different from the topic question.
to both of which my answer is no.
the problem with the poll is that "standard" of living is something of an ambiguous concept.
who's "standard". quality of life is almost as bad, the closer its use to just a renaming of "standard" yet semantically it gets a little more to the point.
at any rate, capitolism isn't the magic wand those who's fortune it is to reap greater bennifit from then the rest of us would have us to believe.
it's bennifitted the evolving of technology, but that hasn't been a universal bennifit either. and now, it even stands as much in the way of its evolving in the most bennificial directions, as much as it has bennifited that evolution in times past.

basically we've come to a point where putting any ideology ahead of solving real challanges to real people, places, and things, has become, as far as any bennifit from it is concerned, obsolete. not just capitolism, but certainly including it.