Capitalism K 2AC
Capitalism is inevitable – even if we resist.
Gary Olson and Jean-Francois Lyotard, 1995 ,”Resisting a Discourse of Mastery: A Conversation
with Jean-Franscois Lyotard”, JAC 15.3, a/online]
Q.In Cultural Critique and elsewhere you propose that “the main problem in today’s society,”
the “problem that overshadows all the others,” is not the contemporary state but capital. In light
of the turn to market economies by China, Russia, Eastern Block nations, and, now, even Cuba to
a certain extent, how do we resist capitalism and its corrosive effect on the social fabric?
A.Impossible. And we have no reason to resist because all these people are looking to
capitalism as a solution to their problems. I was in Petersburg last spring, and it was horrible to
see all these people—very nice people—without work, without money, and they are just
waiting for capitalist investment in order to make things supportable. There is obviously no
other solution, except the ridiculous and dangerous solution proposed by this crazy man, this
neo-nazi, Zhirinovsky. Capitalism is the only solution. Obviously, the same is true in China with
a different way to manage the entrance into capitalism. No, no. This system has no competition,
and to resist it is not to make impediments against it, as in the old tradition. No, no. It’s to
make the people able to eat, to work, to sleep, to have a home, and so on. And in these
conditions, real resistance can appear.
Turn: Attempting to move away from capitalism will cause transitional conflicts that will end
in increased domination and unsustainable exploitation.
Mark Avrum Gubrud @ the Center for Superconductivity Research, 1997, “Nanotechnology and
International Security”, a/online
With molecular manufacturing, international trade in both raw materials and finished goods can
be replaced by decentralized production for local consumption, using locally available materials.
The decline of international trade will undermine a powerful source of common interest. Further,
artificial intelligence will displace skilled as well as unskilled labor. A world system based on
wage labor, transnational capitalism and global markets will necessarily give way. We imagine
that a golden age is possible, but we don’t know how to organize one. As global capitalism
retreats, it will leave behind a world dominated by politics, and possibly feudal
concentrations of wealth and power. Economic insecurity, and fears for the material and moral
future of humankind may lead to the rise of demagogic and intemperate national leaders. With
almost two hundred sovereign nations, each struggling to create a new economic and social
order, perhaps the most predictable outcome is chaos: shifting alignments, displaced
populations, power struggles, ethnic conflicts inflamed by demagogues, class conflicts, land
disputes, etc. Small and underdeveloped nations will be more than ever dependent on the
major powers for access to technology, and more than ever vulnerable to sophisticated forms
of control or subversion, or to outright domination. Competition among the leading
technological powers for the political loyalty of clients might imply reversion to some form of
nationalistic imperialism.
Capitalism K 2AC
Turn: Capitalism encourages liberty and altruism. Revolt against the market guarantees
slavery and oppression.
Martin Wolf, chief economic commentator for the Financial Times, 9-10, 2003, “Morality of the
Market”, a/online
The market economy rests on and encourages valuable moral qualities; provides
unprecedented opportunities for people to engage in altruistic activities; underpins individual
freedom and democracy; and has created societies that are, in all significant respects, less
unequal than the traditional hierarchies that preceded them. In short, capitalism is the most
inherently just economic system that humankind has ever devised. It is true that market
economies neither create, nor reward, saints. But consider the virtuous behavior that capitalism
fosters: trustworthiness, reliability, individual initiative, civility, self-reliance, and selfrestraint. These qualities are, critics correctly note, placed in the service of self-interest. Since
people are, with few exceptions, self-interested, that should be neither surprising nor shocking.
Yet people are also not completely self-interested. Prosperous market economies generate a vast
number of attractive opportunities for those who are not motivated by wealth alone. People can
seek employment with non-governmental organizations or charities. They can work in the
public sector, as doctors, teachers, or police officers. They can teach the iniquities of capitalism
in schools and universities. Those who make a great deal of money can use it for any purpose
they wish. They can give it away, for example. Quite a few have. In the advanced market
economies, people care deeply about eliminating pain and injustice and ensuring the welfare of
fellow humans and, more recently, animals. This concern exists because a rich, liberal society
places enormous emphasis on the health and well-being of the individual. Life is no longer nasty,
brutish, and short; rather, it is gentle, kind, and long, and more precious than before. The savage
punishments and casual indignities of two centuries ago are no longer acceptable to civilized
people. Nor are slavery and serfdom, both of which were rendered obsolete and immoral under
the capitalist system. Militarists, extreme nationalists, communists, and fascists—the antiliberals—brought these horrors back, if only temporarily. And it is no accident that the creeds
that brought them back were fiercely anti-individualistic and anti-market.
The race for wealth is inevitable. Allowing growth through capitalism is crucial to preventing
domination through military expansion.
James Wilson, professor of Government at Harvard, 1997, “The morality of capitalism, a/online
Critics of capitalism argue that wealth confers power, and indeed it does, up to a point. Show
people the road to wealth, status, or power, and they will rush down that road, and many will do
some rather unattractive things along the way. But this is not a decisive criticism unless one
supposes, fancifully, that there is some way to arrange human affairs so that the desire for
advantage vanishes. The real choice is between becoming wealthy by first acquiring political
or military power, or getting money directly without bothering with conquest or domination. If it is in
man’s nature to seek domination over other men, there are really only two ways to make that domination work. One is military power, and that is the principle
upon which domination existed from the beginning of man’s time on this earth to down about two hundred years ago, when it began to be set aside by another
principle, namely the accum-ulation of wealth. Now you may feel that men should not try to dominate other men – although I do not see how you could believe
this in Australia given the importance attached to sports. You may like to replace man’s desire to dominate other men, and in a few cases it is prevented by
, you only have two choices, and if you choose
to compete economically you will reduce the extent to which one group of men will tyrannise
over another by the use of military might or political power.
religious conversion or a decent temperament. But as long as the instinct persists
Capitalism K 2AC
Revolutions fail to engage the root of the problem.
Michael Zimmerman, professor of philosophy @ Tulane, 1989, “We Need New Myths”, pp 24
Marxism, as Robert Tucker has argued, can be seen as a distorted mythic symbol in which the
struggle of good and evil within the individual is projected onto social classes: the blood-sucking
capitalist class fights (vainly) to dominate the creative-productive working class. When the
capitalist class is destroyed by the proletariat, alienation will supposedly be destroyed as well. If
Marxist revolutionaries can bring down the center of capitalism, the United States, world-history
will supposedly begin its Golden Age. This myth is so attractive to many people because it
portrays in social-class terms the problems that each individual must face. A person committed to
the revolutionary cause can through this projection postpone the painful process of their own
individuation. It goes without saying, of course, that capitalism is in fact responsible for social
ills, but neither the capitalist class nor its individual constituents are the embodiment and source
of evil. The dark side is an aspect of every human being; it cannot be eliminated by social
revolution
The belief that capitalism is the root cause of all societal ill closes the possibility of pragmatic
solutions, and fractures the movement by isolating moderates as capitalists.
Richard Levin, president of Yale, 1998, The Minnesota Review, 48-49, a/online
As a result of this view of the world, many people on the far right and far left are single-causers;
they believe not only that everything the demon does has bad effects in our society, but also
that everything bad in our society is caused by this demon. Right-wing extremists hold
feminism or secular humanism or ZOG responsible for drugs, crime, floridation, and the decline
of "family values," and many leftists—including some appearing in mr—claim that capitalism is
the cause of racism and sexism (Cotter 119-21, Lewis 97-98, Young 288-91). This, in turn, leads to
the belief that there's a single cure, and only this one cure, for all these social ills: the complete
extirpation of the demon that causes them and the complete transformation of society. Thus
extremists on both sides tend to be all-or-nothingists, to reject all reforms as "band-aids" that
are doomed to fail since they don't get at the source of our problems and so won't further this
radical transformation (Neilson/Meyerson 45: 268-69). Many are also millenarians who believe the transformation will be brought about by an
apocalyptic clash between the forces of good and evil ending in the permanent defeat of the demon and the creation of a utopia(for fundamentalists this is a literal
Armageddon and Second Coming, for militias it's RaHoWa (Racial Holy War) or the uprising of true patriots against our traitorous government foretold in The
Turner Diaries with its Hitlerian "final solution," and for Marxists it's the proletarian revolution that, their anthem tells us, will be "the final conflict."
Another consequence of their polarization is that partisans at both extremes try to eliminate
the intermediate positions between them, often by denying their differences. Neilson and
Meyerson say that "we should see liberalism and conservatism as flipsides" (45: 269) and argue
that Republicans and Democrats are really the same (47: 242), as does Tom Lewis at greater
length (89-90). Similarly, George Wallace, in his racist, third-party campaign, insisted that "there
isn't a dime's worth of difference between them." More sinister is their tendency to "disappear"
these intermediate positions by equating them with the opposite extreme. McCarthy and his followers
attacked Democrats and even liberal Republicans as "pinkos" and "fellow travelers," and Marxist regimes condemned social democrats and even communists who
deviated from the party line as fascist counterrevolutionaries who must be liquidated. Some extremists on the academic left employ this tactic against moderates
and liberals, although with less lethal results. The same Marxist critic who called me a "self-confessed liberal" also called me, in another essay published in the
same year, a "reactionary" ("Terminator" 64), and Donald Morton and Mas'ud Zavarzadeh consign Gerald Graff, Stanley Fish, Richard Rorty, and Andrew Ross to
the same camp as Rush Limbaugh (32-33). (Neilson and Meyerson's attack on Bérubé is more restrained--the worst thing they call him is a "liberal pluralist" [45:
267, 47: 239, 245]; but they try to connect him, as I noted, to support of the far right in Central America.) Such people need a simplistic division of the political
world into two polar opposites with no awkward alternatives (just as they need a simplistic explanation of the cause and cure of all our problems), because they
can't tolerate complexity or uncertainty. That mental set, I believe, is the most significant similarity (or "equivalence") between the far right and far left.
Capitalism K 2AC
Transformation is impossible. Lack of a clear alternative to capitalism dooms their
criticism
Joel Jay Kassiola, Dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, San Francisco
State University, 1990, The Death of Industrial Civilization, p. 159
Transformational or revolutionary action will be difficult to mobilize— let alone implement—
without a set of alternative social goals and practices implied by a different worldview and values
informing such action. This is so, unless, of course, one wishes to be exclusively negative in one’s
critique by advocating the destruction of current social aims and arrangements and leaving it to
others at a later, and presumably more propitious, time to create a new social order; for example, as
with certain anarchists’ positions such as the nineteenth century, Russian anarchist Mikhail
Bakunin’s “creative destruction.” The risk here is that the new yet to be determined society could be
worse than the one changed. Furthermore, by omitting a vision of a supposedly superior, alternative
society the achievement of social transformation is thwarted because the proposed theoretical
structure or “city coming into being in speech,” as Plato formulates it in The Republic,’ can neither
guide political action, so that people know what to strive for, nor provide the evaluative criteria with
which to judge how successful their action has been in creating a new—and supposedly better—
civilization.
1AR – Transition Bad
Any attempt to break free of the global economy will face immediate destruction
Ted Trainer, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Social Work, University of
New South Wales, last updated 2/17/2003, http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/02-TheSimpler-Way.html, accessed 4/28/03
"When corporations rule the world" This heading, the title of a recent book by David Korten, sums
up the situation that has arisen over the last 20 years. A tiny corporate super-rich class has risen to
extraordinary wealth and power and are now able to more or less run the world in the ways that suit
it. (About 1% of the world’s people now control more than half the capital; Note 7.) They run the
transnational corporations, the media and especially the World Bank, IMF and World Trade
Organisation. Their wealth funds the think tanks, foundations, universities, journals etc which pump
out the message that the neo-liberal way is the best and the only way. Governments eagerly comply
with this agenda. Rich world military power is liable to be used ruthlessly against nations which
interfere with this agenda of free access for corporations and integration of all regions into the one
global market (e.g., Yugoslavia, Iraq.) Much of the literature on globalisation is alarmed at this
situation of corporate rule; (see especially Chussudowsky, 1996, Fotopolous, 2002, and many of the
works by Chomsky.) There are good reasons for thinking that it is now too late to do anything about
this rapid surge to world domination by the super-rich, especially since the "war on terrorism" has
provided a perfect pretext for crushing dissent.
Elite attempts to halt transition will kill billions and crush the earth’s carrying
capacity
Chris Lewis, Professor of American Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder, 1998,
in The Coming Age of Scarcity, ed Dobkowski and Wallimann, p 56-57
Most critics would argue, probably correctly, that instead of allowing underdeveloped countries to
withdraw from the global economy and undermine the economies of the developed world, the
United States, Europe, and Japan and others will fight neocolonial wars to force these countries to
remain within this collapsing global economy. These neocolonial wars will result in mass death,
suffering, and even regional nuclear wars. If First World countries choose military confrontation and
political repression to maintain the global economy, then we may see mass death and genocide on a
global scale that will make the deaths of World War II pale in comparison. However, these
neocolonial wars, fought to maintain the developed nations’ economic and political hegemony, will
cause the final collapse of our global industrial civilization. These wars will so damage the complex
economic and trading networks and squander material, biological, and energy resources that they
will undermine the global economy and its ability to support the earth’s 6 to 8 billion people. This
would be the worst-case scenario for the collapse of global civilization.
1AR – Transition Bad
De-development is classist and maintains capitalism, even when it’s working at its peak.
Pip Hinman, staff writer, 1996, “Utopia Revisited”, greenleft.org, a/online
But only those with the material means and political power are in a position to do this. Sadly,
the majority of people haven't a choice about their work, housing and transportation, a fact
which Trainer, at times, seems to skip over. Most of the examples of what Trainer considers to
be on the way to becoming "radical conserver societies" pose no challenge to capitalism even if
they achieve a high level of self-sufficiency. Indeed, the Israeli kibbutz movement is an
integral part of a capitalist expansionist project.
Attempts to escape capitalism create worse conditions
Martin Peretz, Lecturer in Social Studies, Harvard; February 3, 2003 New Republic
What is the grand "progressive" vision for which the French left fights, which the Zionists and Jews
are insidiously holding back? In the grand conflicts of the last century, there was always a left-wing
structure of Manichaeanism. On the one side: imperialism and capitalism. On the other: a
compelling and revolutionary dream. The dreams turned out to be nightmares. But they were
dreams, nonetheless. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Che, the Viet Cong, the Sandinistas, always a man
and a movement saying they aimed to build a better world, which they actually tried to describe. In
the end, of course, the better world did not arrive: In its place were death camps, mass deportations,
forced famines, massacres, reeducation programs, prisons of the body, and greater prisons of the
soul.
Capitalism Good – Racism
Capitalism solves racism.
James Wilson, professor of Government at Harvard, 1997, “The morality of capitalism, a/online
Capitalism promotes civility in another way: it makes prejudice too expensive to afford. The
great Nobel laureate economist, Gary Becker pointed this out in a book written 40 years ago.
People didn’t take it seriously then but I think we must take it seriously now. If you say to
yourself that you will not serve or employ blacks, or Turks, or Cypriots, or whatever group
your society happens to be hostile to, you will reduce the number of customers you can reach
and the number of potential employees you can hire. This has the effect of shrinking your
market and raising the wages of those employees whom you can hire. Now in some
environments, such as in the American south until the 1960s, it was possible to maintain
segregation in public facilities, because the legal system and its surrounding culture supported
segregation so strongly that a businessperson had no chance. Embedded in a thoroughly racist
community, capitalism could easily exist side by side with prejudice, because there are no
competitive disadvantages to acting on the basis of prejudice. But once that legal and cultural
system began to crack, once there were a few opportunities for hiring people on a nondiscriminatory basis or serving customers on a non-discriminatory basis, firms changed
dramatically. The nationwide firms changed the fastest, because they realised that capitalism
is incompatible with prejudice. None of this is to deny the important role played by law, court
order, and the example of desegregated government agencies. But imagine rapid desegregation
occurring if only law were operating. It would be slow, uneven, and painful. Public schools
desegregated more slowly than hotels and restaurants, not only because white parents cared
more about whom their children went to school with than about who was in the next hotel room
or at the next café table, but also because school authorities lacked any market incentive to
admit more or different pupils. Indeed, a statist economy will not only resist desegregation, it
will allocate economic benefits – franchises, licenses, credit – precisely on the basis of political,
class, ethnic or racial status. It is capitalism that really requires a cosmopolitan attitude.
Capitalism Good – Environmental Protection
Capitalism is crucial to preserving the environment and saving lives.
Jerry Taylor, director of natural resource studies @ Cato, 4/23/ 2003, http://www.cato.org/dailys/0423-03-2.html
Indeed, we wouldn't even have environmentalists in our midst were it not for capitalism.
Environmental amenities, after all, are luxury goods. America -- like much of the Third World today -- had
no environmental movement to speak of until living standards rose sufficiently so that we could turn our attention from
simply providing for food, shelter, and a reasonable education to higher "quality of life" issues. The richer you are, the
more likely you are to be an environmentalist. And people wouldn't be rich without capitalism. Wealth not only breeds
environmentalists, it begets environmental quality. There are dozens of studies showing that , as per capita income
initially rises from subsistence levels, air and water pollution increases correspondingly. But
once per capita income hits between $3,500 and $15,000 (dependent upon the pollutant), the
ambient concentration of pollutants begins to decline just as rapidly as it had previously increased.
This relationship is found for virtually every significant pollutant in every single region of the planet. It is an iron law.
Given that wealthier societies use more resources than poorer societies, such findings are indeed counterintuitive. But the
data don't lie. How do we explain this? The obvious answer -- that wealthier societies are willing to trade-off
the economic costs of government regulation for environmental improvements and that poorer
societies are not -- is only partially correct. In the United States, pollution declines generally
predated the passage of laws mandating pollution controls. In fact, for most pollutants, declines
were greater before the federal government passed its panoply of environmental regulations than
after the EPA came upon the scene. Much of this had to do with individual demands for
environmental quality. People who could afford cleaner-burning furnaces, for instance, bought
them. People who wanted recreational services spent their money accordingly, creating profit opportunities for the
provision of untrammeled nature. Property values rose in cleaner areas and declined in more polluted areas, shifting
capital from Brown to Green investments. Market agents will supply whatever it is that people are willing to spend
money on. And when people are willing to spend money on environmental quality, the market will provide it.
Meanwhile, capitalism rewards efficiency and punishes waste. Profit-hungry companies found
ingenious ways to reduce the natural resource inputs necessary to produce all kinds of goods,
which in turn reduced environmental demands on the land and the amount of waste that flowed
through smokestacks and water pipes. As we learned to do more and more with a given unit of resources, the waste
involved (which manifests itself in the form of pollution) shrank. This trend was magnified by the shift away from
manufacturing to service industries, which characterizes wealthy, growing economies. The latter are far less pollutionintensive than the former. But the former are necessary prerequisites for the latter. Property rights -- a necessary
prerequisite for free market economies -- also provide strong incentives to invest in resource health.
Without them, no one cares about future returns because no one can be sure they'll be around
to reap the gains. Property rights are also important means by which private desires for resource conservation and
preservation can be realized. When the government, on the other hand, holds a monopoly on such decisions, minority
preferences in developing societies are overruled (see the old Soviet block for details). Furthermore, only wealthy
societies can afford the investments necessary to secure basic environmental improvements,
such as sewage treatment and electrification. Unsanitary water and the indoor air pollution
(caused primarily by burning organic fuels in the home for heating and cooking needs) are
directly responsible for about 10 million deaths a year in the DEVELOPING[SIC]Third World,
making poverty the number one environmental killer on the planet today.
Capitalism can save more lives threatened by environmental pollution than all the
environmental organizations combined. Finally, the technological advances that are part and
parcel of growing economies create more natural resources than they consume. That's because
what is or is not a "natural resource" is dependent upon our ability to harness the resource in
question for human benefit. Resources are therefore a function of human knowledge. Because the stock of human
knowledge increases faster in free economies than it does in socialist economies, it should be no surprise that most natural
resources in the western world are more abundant today than ever before no matter which measure one uses.
Capitalism Good– Democracy
Capitalism is the soil of morality and individualism that is key for the successful growth of
democracy. .
James Wilson, professor of Government at Harvard, 1997, “The morality of capitalism, a/online
These are the assumptions upon which a capitalist order rests, and I think most people hearing
them described will not dissent profoundly from this argument. But now the more controversial
part of my argument. My second point is that capitalism in the long run strengthens the moral
sensibilities. It does so by sustaining a liberal social order, by sustaining and indeed creating
criticism of capitalism itself, and by enhancing civility among citizens. Capitalism is essential
to liberalism – and by liberalism I mean the principles around which a free society is organised.
It has become clear during the last half century that democratic regimes only flourish in
capitalist societies. Not every nation with something approximating capitalism is democratic,
but every nation that is democratic is to some significant degree capitalist. There are capitalist
economies that exist in authoritarian states but they do not do very well. There is a
relationship between democracy and capitalism that the defenders of democracy often
overlook to their great disadvantage.
Growth Good -- Growth Solves Crunch
Growth key to solving scarcity.
Michael Zey, PhD and director of the Expansionary Institute, 2000, The Future Factor, 20
Our efforts to achieve dominionization over the basic forces of nature and over the Earth itself
have a major beneficial by-product—the creation of a superabundance of food, goods, sources
of energy, and manufactured products. This end of scarcity on a global level is a landmark
event in human history. During the Macroindustrial Era, we are redefining the concept of "the
good life." More important, the rapid diffusion of wealth and wealth-generating technologies and
knowledge is in turn enabling the global population to participate in the dominionization
process. In the agricultural domain, breakthroughs in biotechnology and genetic engineering
will deliver to humanity a veritable cornucopia of new agricultural products that resist
disease, frost, and infestation, and have a longer shelf life. Cell factories and plant tissue
technology are making possible the mass production of vegetable and fruit in artificial
environments. Hydroponic plants will grow in waterless soil! The sum total of these efforts will
provide goods and food to the multibillions inhabiting our planet—for the first time in human
history the world's population will be well fed, well clothed, and comfortably housed. And a
very large population could be served, perhaps 40 to 50 billion people or more.
Growth Good -- Growth Solves Environmental Destruction
Growth and technology are crucial to halting environmental degradation.
Michael Zey, PhD and director of the Expansionary Institute, 2000, The Future Factor, 22-23
Humankind's invention of the "supertree" illustrates one of the least-acknowledged benefits of
the hyperprogress occurring during the Macroindustrial Era: although economic, technological,
and industrial growth occasionally cause problems, such as pollution and possible reduction in
the supply of some natural resources, our technology ultimately generates solutions to the very
problems it creates. Our civilization requires wood and paper products to continue progressing.
In the process we temporarily reduce the available source of these wood products, namely trees.
However, our resourceful species just as quickly replaces these commodities—in this case we
applied genetic engineering techniques to produce greater quantities of wood. In fact, economic
growth and technology directly counteract environmental degradation. Studies indicate that
while a developing country's early economic growth initially can lead to pollution and waste,
once that nation achieves true prosperity it then possesses the resources to clean its air and
purify its water. In his 1999 book, Earth Odyssey, environmentalist David Hertsgaard reports
that the poorest cities, not the most prosperous, were usually the most polluted. The citizens in
these places can buy cars, but cannot afford cars with catalytic converters. According to the
World Bank, once a nation's per capita income rises to about $4000 in 1993 dollars, it produces
less of many pollutants per capita. At this income level a nation can now afford to purchase the
technology to purify its coal exhausts and the sewage systems that treat and eliminate a variety of
wastes. 12 Although China is switching to cleaner technologies such as nuclear, it still favors the
use of its locally abundant, and therefore cheaper, resource, coal. We can predict that once
countries like China become more affluent they will have the wherewithal to clean up their
atmosphere. Technology is now being used to deal with waste produced by tanker accidents
and other unexpected events that can send millions of gallons of oil or other chemicals
gushing into our pristine lakes and oceans. One novel method, bioremediation, uses microbes,
bacteria as it were, as a veritable cleanup crew, for everything from nuclear waste to oil spills.
This new environmental technology is based upon the notion that bacteria are the perfect agents
to literally "eat" industrial waste. U.S. Microbics is one company that specializes in this
increasingly popular technique. (Publicly held, its stock symbol is BUGS . . . seriously.) In early
1999, it announced that its new production plant had commenced shipping microbial blends to
treat hydrocarbon-contaminated soil. U.S. Microbics used biotechnology, bacteria mostly, to clean
up sewage wastes, including diesel oil spills. According to the company, "naturally occurring
bacteria blends are used to convert the hazardous diesel fuel into harmless, earth-friendly,
chemical byproducts."
Cap good – poverty
Growth empirically reduces poverty
Seth W. Norton, Aldeen Professor of Business at Wheaton College, Fall 2002,
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj22n2/cj22n2-5.pdf, accessed 4/26/03
The more relevant issue is the role of economic growth in reducing poverty. The trickle-up
contention and the jaundiced view of trickledown —the trickle is just a small trickle—rest strongly
on the contention that it is the “quality of growth” and the redistribution of the benefits of growth,
not growth itself, that leads to the elimination of poverty. The results documented in Tables 2 and 3
challenge that assertion. For example, suppose the poor countries of the world experienced average
economic growth of 5 percent per annum. After 5 years, the compounded income would result in an
increase of about 27.62 percent. Ignoring the effect of the other income group, the impact of the rich
stratum’s income growth would decrease the death rate (“Death by 40”) by about 3.76 percent,
whereas an increase in the income of the poor stratum would reduce the death rate by about 2.55
percent.4 Thus, in the ceteris paribus sense, the poverty reduction by growth of the richest class’s
income would generate a greater effect than the poverty reduction attributable to the growth of poor
class’s income. However, incomes of the rich and poor do not grow in a ceteris paribus sense. The
incomes of the rich and the poor actually grow together as Table 1 clearly documents. More
importantly, the data show that poverty falls as the rich get richer. Thus, economic growth should
enhance the well-being of the poor as well as the rich. We can directly examine the role of economic
growth in ameliorating poverty as measured by the HPI. Table 4 contains regression estimates of the
impact of economic growth, as measured by the percentage growth rates in per capita GDP for
various time periods, on the HPI. For control purposes, the initial per capita GDP levels are also
included in the estimates to assure that the results deal with growth and not just the dispersion of
income across countries.5 The results show that the growth rates for all periods are significant
determinants of poverty rates, and the sign is negative in all cases—i.e., economic growth reduces
measured poverty rates. Moreover, the explanatory power of growth rates increases somewhat as the
period lengthens, with the maximum explanatory power occurring with the 1970–90 estimate. The
use of the components of the HPI in comparable regressions in Table 5, using only the estimate
from Table 4 with the highest adjusted R-squared (the 1970–90 estimate), provides further evidence
of the benefits of economic growth to the poor. In particular, if growth increased one standard
deviation above the mean for the 1970–90 period (i.e., by .44), the proportion of the population
surviving to age 40 would increase by almost 6 percentage points. At the sample mean, there would
be a reduction from about 21 percent not surviving to age 40 to about 15 percent.
Growth solves mass poverty and vastly increases living standards
Ian Vásquez, director of the Cato Institute's Project on Global Economic Liberty,
September 2001, http://www.cato.org/research/articles/vas-0109.html, accessed 4/26/03
The historical record is clear: the single, most effective way to reduce world poverty is economic
growth. Western countries began discovering this around 1820 when they broke with the historical
norm of low growth and initiated an era of dramatic advances in material well-being. Living
standards tripled in Europe and quadrupled in the United States in that century, improving at an
even faster pace in the next 100 years. Economic growth thus eliminated mass poverty in what is
today considered the developed world. Taking the long view, growth has also reduced poverty in
other parts of the world: in 1820, about 75 percent of humanity lived on less than a dollar per day;
today about 20 percent live under that amount.
Cap good – poverty
Growth is the main force behind poverty reduction, and contractions increase
poverty
Ian Vásquez, director of the Cato Institute's Project on Global Economic Liberty,
September 2001, http://www.cato.org/research/articles/vas-0109.html, accessed 4/26/03
The pattern of poverty reduction we see around the world should not be surprising. It generally
follows the relationship found by a recent World Bank study that looked at growth in 65 developing
countries during the 1980s and 1990s. The share of people in poverty, defined as those living on less
than a dollar per day, almost always declined in countries that experienced growth and increased in
countries that experienced economic contractions. The faster the growth, the study found, the faster
the poverty reduction, and vice versa. For example, an economic expansion in per capita income of
8.2 percent translated into a 6.1 reduction in the poverty rate. A contraction of 1.9 percent in output
led to an increase of 1.5 percent in the poverty rate. That relationship explains why some countries
and regions have done better than others. "Between 1987 and 1998, there was only one region of the
world that saw a dramatic fall in both the number of people and the proportion of the population
living on less than a dollar a day. That region was East Asia," observes economist Martin Wolf.
"But this was also the only region to see consistent and rapid growth in real incomes per head."
High growth allowed East Asia to reduce the share of its poor during this period from 26 to 15
percent and the number of poor from 417 million to 278 million people. With annual growth rates of
nearly 9 percent since 1979, when it began introducing market reforms, China alone has pulled more
than 100 million people out of poverty. The more modest but increasing growth rate in India during
the past decade means that the outlook of the poor in the two countries that make up half of the
developing world's population is noticeably improving.
Cap good – racism
Capitalism prevents racism
Martin W. Lewis, associate research professor of geography, co-director of Comparative
Area Studies, Duke University, 1992, Green Delusions, pp. 173-174
Business leaders have opposed apartheid not because of their magnaniniity, but rather because
discrimination is m many respects highly disfunctional for the economy. Many South African
companies have long suffered from shortages of skilled labor, yet they have been politically
prevented from tapping a huge segment of the populace for such posidons. As a result, wages for
white workers have been far greater than the market would dictate, a situation hardly advantageous
for capital. Even more importantly, the fact that so many people have been reduced to dire poverty
by political edict greatly reduces the internal South African market, which in turn undercuts the
potential profitability of consumergoods firms. The underdevelopment of the consumer economy, m
turn, severely hampers the country’s overall economic performance.
The same underlying patterns may be seen, albeit in weaker form, in the United States. It was, of
course, the capitalistic Republican Party that dismantled slavery; until relatively recent times the
Democratic Party of workers and farmers formed the bulwark of discrimination. As a system,
capitalism thrives on equality of opportunity. Efficient corporations welcome talented individuals
from all social ranks into their middle and upper echelons—so long as they are adept at making
profits. Thus the editor of Fortune magazine tells us that “One of America’s great competitive
weapons is that we are far ahead of the Japanese and most other foreign competitors in at last
beginning to admit women to positions of real power” (July 30, 1990, p. 4). Of course, individual
capitalists can be as bigoted as any one else, and many are blind to the general requirements of the
system as a whole. And so too, equality of opportunity must never be confused with social equity, as
those individuals lacking the demanded skills and motivation will always be poorly rewarded by the
rational corporation.
Cap  survival
Embracing capitalism is the only way to ensure human survival
Michael Zey, executive director of the Expansionary Institute, Professor of Management
at Montclair State University, 1998, Seizing the Future, p. 34, pp. 39-40
However, no outside force guarantees the continued progress of the human species, nor does
anything mandate that the human species must even continue to exist. In fact, history is littered with
races and civilizations that have disappeared without a trace. So, too, could the human species.
There is no guarantee that the human species will survive even if we posit, as many have, a special
purpose to the species’ existence. Therefore, the species innately comprehends that it must engage in
purposive actions in order to maintain its level of growth and progress. Humanity’s future is
conditioned by what I call the Imperative of Growth, a principle I will herewith describe along with
its several corollaries. The Imperative of Growth states that in order to survive, any nation, indeed,
the human race, must grow, both materially and intellectually. The Macroindustrial Era represents
growth in the areas of both technology and human development, a natural stage in the evolution of
the species’ continued extension of its control over itself and its environment. Although 5 billion
strong, our continued existence depends on our ability to continue the progress we have been
making at higher and higher levels. Systems, whether organizations, societies, or cells, have three
basic directions in which to move. They can grow, decline, or temporarily reside in a state of
equilibrium. These are the choices. Choosing any alternative to growth, for instance, stabilization of
production/consumption through zero-growth policies, could have alarmingly pernicious side
effects, including extinction.
He continues…
The fifth corollary of the Imperative of Growth claims that a society can remain in a state of
equilibrium only temporarily. In reality, a society seemingly in a phase where it neither improves
nor regresses is actually in a transition to either growth or decline. Such periods easily seduce their
contemporaries into a false sense of security, that their institutions will last forever, they have all the
science they need, and there are no more challenges. In fact, during such periods some imagine that
they have reached their “golden age,” perhaps even the “end of history.” During such periods of
supposed equilibrium, the population ceases to prepare itself for new challenges and becomes risk
averse. Importantly, they reject the idea that growth and progress are necessary for their survival.
The sixth corollary evolves from the fifth. If the system chooses not to grow, it will decline and
eventually disappear, either because other organisms or systems overtake it or because it is
impossible to maintain itself even at static levels without in some way deteriorating. This is the Law
of Spiraling Regression. It is indeed a curiosity of the late-twentieth-century culture that this truism
has been ignored. In the morass of claims about the risks of technological growth and its impact on
the ecosystem, the mainstream media and orthodox academics have decided not to consider what
harm the full pursuance of zero growth or non growth might inflict on the sociotechnical system,
which includes our technological infrastructure, culture, and standard of living.
Growth good saves the environment
Growth stops people from destroying the environment to survive
Bill Emmott, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, 2003, 20:21 Vision, p. 268
Inequality may also bring a risk of environmental degradation, for poor countries may be unable to
deal safely with toxic pollutants, or may be so desperate in the face of population growth and
poverty that they permit actions, such as deforestation, that have a damaging influence on the global
climate. In general, rising incomes bring better control of environmental damage, as Chapter ii will
argue. A few extreme environmentalists raise concern about any and all economic growth in poor
countries, for in the short term that growth could bring on new environmental challenges, such as
the burning of coal and other dirty fuels in Chinese homes and factories. But it would surely be
intolerably selfish to deny poor countries advancement on those grounds. The bigger ground for
concern is pollution out of desperation: the resort by the poorest to shortsighted forms of agriculture
or industry, in the absence of any other means of survival.
Ecological protection is only possible with through growth
Jack Hollander, Professor of Energy & Resources at Berkeley, 2003, The Real
Environmental Crisis, pp. 183-184, pp. 193-194
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) embodies many of this book’s themes and can even be seen as
one of its major focal points. It is probably the most far-reaching environmental statute ever adopted
by any nation. The act is solidly grounded in the moral commitment of the American people to
preserve their environment and is a demonstration of the claim, made throughout this book, that free
and affluent people will take action to protect their environment when they perceive an important
problem and believe there is an effective solution. Scientists, environmentalists, and legislators
played important roles, to be sure, but at bottom the Endangered Species Act belongs to the
American people. Such a mandate, involving huge expenditures of public and private money, could
not have come out of a country whose citizens were not dedicated to environmental quality. Nor
could the act have come out of an impoverished country. In fact, the gap between rich and poor
countries in biodiversity conservation investments is enormous. In the developed countries, the
average investment in protected areas is about $1,687 per square kilometer, whereas in the poor
countries the average investment is only $161. This despite the fact that both the biological diversity
and threats to that diversity in poor countries are often much greater than in rich countries.
He continues…
Whether in affluent or developing countries, the link between economic growth and environmental
quality is vital. This link was recognized as a principle by the Brundtland report, and it has been
confirmed by the actual experience of many affluent countries. In these pages the emphasis has been
on the historical experience of the United States, whose robust economic growth and unequaled
affluence have stimulated and supported ever stricter environmental protection, including measures
such as the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, vehicle fuel-efficiency standards, and the unique
Endangered Species Act. Such environmental advances come out of affluence, not poverty.
Growth good saves the environment
Growth spawns environmentalism and regulations to prevent destruction
Jack Hollander, Professor of Energy & Resources at Berkeley, 2003, The Real
Environmental Crisis, pp. 2-3
Environmentalists are made, not born. In the industrial countries environmentalism arose as a
reaction to the negative impacts of early industrialization and economic growth. On the way from
subsistence to affluence, people developed a greater sense of social responsibility and had more time
and energy to reflect about environmental quality. They had experienced environmental
deterioration firsthand, and they demanded improvement. One of the great success stories of the
recent half-century is, in fact, the remarkable progress the industrial societies have made, during a
period of robust economic growth, in reversing the negative environmental impacts of
industrialization. In the United States the air is cleaner and the drinking water purer than at any time
in five decades; the food supply is more abundant and safer than ever before; the forested area is the
highest in three hundred years; most rivers and lakes are clean again; and, largely because of
technological innovation and the information revolution, industry, buildings, and transportation
systems are more energy- and resource-efficient than at any time in the past. This is not to say that
the resource/environment situation in the United States is near perfect or even totally satisfactory—
of course it is not. Much more needs to be done. But undeniably, the improvements have been
remarkable. They have come about in a variety of ways—through government regulation, through
taxation, through financial incentives, through community actions. Most important, these
environmental improvements cannot be credited solely to government, environmental organizations,
or lobbyists, though each has played an important role. Rather, they have come about because the
majority of citizens in this and every other democratic affluent society demands a clean and livable
environment. Does this imply that the affluent have achieved an improved environment in their own
lands by exporting their pollution to the lands of the poor? That has rarely been the case. (See the
discussion of exporting pollution in Chapter 7.)
Empirically, human behavior will adapt to prevent ecocide
Bill Emmott, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, 2003, 20:21 Vision, pp. 281-282
Certainly, things have changed. After all, the world’s populanon has more than trebled in the past
hundred years, and world output has risen even faster. So it is only natural to expect that the earth
itself will have been affected. But one would also expect people’s behavior to have changed in
response. People depend on the earth for their food, air and water, and for other less vital resources
too. So they have a strong incentive to protect their enviromnent in ways relevant to their needs,
comfort and survival, and a strong incentive to learn both from bad experiences and from new
scientific discoveries. If people typically lived, consumed and produced things now in the same way
that they did in 1900 (or 1950, or indeed 1980), the world would be a pretty disgusting place:
smelly, dangerous, insanitary, toxic and worse. But they don’t. The streets of London or other big,
rich cities are no longer full of horse manure, or blanketed in smoky fog, or full of open sewers;
houses are no longer full of harmful smoke (not even from cigarettes, one of the biggest killers), and
water is cleaner both from the taps and in the rivers and seas. The reasons why people in the rich,
developed world have changed the way they live, and why the environment has not in fact been
turned to rack and ruin, have to do with prices, technological innovation, social change and, in
democracies, government regulation in response to popular pressure. And those reasons are why
today’s much larger environmental problems in the developing countries ought, in principle, to be
solvable.
Growth good saves the environment
Liberalization causes industries to use better environmental practices
Susmita Dasgupta, professor of economics at American University, senior economist at
the World Bank, et all, Winter 2002,
http://fletcher.tufts.edu/staff/mkahn/.%5Cpdf248spring03%5CWheeler.pdf, accessed
5/3/03
Elimination of government subsidies often has an environmentally beneficial effect in this context.
The heaviest polluters often receive subsidies, because they operate in sectors such as steel and
petrochemicals where state intervention has been common. Privatization and reduction of subsidies
tend to reduce the scale of such activities, while expanding production in the assembly and service
sectors that emit fewer pollutants (Dasgupta, Wang and Wheeler, 1997; Lucas, Hettige and Wheeler,
1992; Jha, Markandya and Vossenaar, 1999; Birdsall and Wheeler, 1993). Elimination of energy
subsidies increases energy efficiency, shifts industry away from energy-intensive sectors, and
reduces demand for pollution-intensive power (Vukina, Beghin and Solakoglu, 1999; World Bank,
1999). However, higher energy prices also induce shifts from capital- and energy-intensive
production techniques to labor- and materials-intensive techniques, which are often more pollutionintensive in other ways (Mani, Hettige and Wheeler, 2000). Economic liberalization also has a
common effect, at least in pollution-intensive sectors, of enlarging the market share of larger plants
that operate at more efficient scale (Wheeler, 2000; Hettige, Dasgupta and Wheeler, 2000). This
change often involves a shift toward publicly held firms at the expense of family firms. The
improvement in efficiency means less pollution per unit of production, although larger plants may
also concentrate pollution in a certain locality (Lucas, Dasgupta and Wheeler, 2001). In China, stateowned enterprises have much higher costs for reducing air pollution because they are operated less
efficiently. Figure 3 displays recent econometric estimates of control costs for sulfur dioxide air
pollution in large Chinese factories (Dasgupta, Wang and Wheeler, 1997).1 The level of polluting
emissions also reflects managers’ technology decisions. In the OECD countries, innovations have
generated significantly cleaner technologies that are available at incremental cost to producers in
developing countries. Even in weakly regulated economies, many firms have adopted these cleaner
technologies because they are more profitable. Increased openness to trade also tends to lower the
price of cleaner imported technologies, while increasing the competitive pressure to adopt them if
they are also more efficient (Reppelin-Hill, 1999; Huq, Martin and Wheeler, 1993; Martin and
Wheeler, 1992). Thus, firms in relatively open developing economies adopt cleaner technologies
more quickly (Birdsall and Wheeler, 1993; Huq, Martin and Wheeler, 1993).
Growth stops war
Growth reduces conflict, while downswings greatly increase risk of war
Paul Collier, director, Development Research Group at the World Bank; professor of
economics at Oxford, 2000, in Greed and Grievance, ed. Berdal and Malone, pp. 97-98
The only result that supports the grievance approach to conflict is that a prior period of rapid
economic decline increases the risk of conflict. Each 5 percent of annual growth rate has about the
same effect as a year of education for the population in reducing the risk of conflict. Thus, a society
in which the economy is growing by 5 percent is around 40 percent safer than one that is declining
by 5 percent, other things equal. Presumably, growth gives hope, whereas rapid decline may
galvanize people into action. Inequality, whether measured in terms of income or landownership,
has no effect on the risk of conflict according to the data. This is, of course, surprising given the
attention inequality has received as an explanation of conflict. The results cannot, however, be
lightly dismissed. For example, the measures of inequality have proved to be significant in
explaining economic growth and so are evidenfly not so noisy as to lack explanatory power. Nor is
our result dependent upon a particular specification. Anke Hoeffler and I have experimented with
well over a hundred variants of our core specification, and in none of these is inequality a significant
cause of conflict. (By contrast, primary commodity exports are always significant.)
Growth is key to peaceful conflict resolution and prevention
Indra de Soysa, senior research associate at the International Peace Research Institute,
2000, in Greed and Grievance, ed. Berdal and Malone, p. 126
The question is, How can a country escape from resource dependence and manage to innovate?
Economic growth is vital because the raising of per capita income proxies innovative capabilities.
Bringing about economic growth through development assistance is one obvious answer. Countries
with higher per capita wealth are far less likely to suffer internal conflict and are more likely to
exhibit strong democracy—which is widely seen as promoting peace and conflict resolution. Thus,
renewed efforts at promoting economic growth and democratic institutions seem to be the best longterm strategy for creating what UNESCO has termed “a culture of peace” in the developing world.
Growth solves international conflicts
Leonard Silk, Distinguished Professor of Economics at Pace University; Senior Fellow of
the Brookings Institution, 1992 / 1993 Foreign Affairs
But slow growth in the world economy now makes the danger of a reversion to beggar-thy-neighbor
policies a real one. n11 Some see the three major economic powers -- the United States, Germany
and Japan -- riding in different directions and threatening to pull the world economy apart. But the
interdependence resulting from economic integration has greatly reduced the effective autonomy of
even large national economies. Nations have found that their policies are now less potent
domestically, affect other countries more strongly and produce sharp and often unwelcome changes
in the trade and payments balances and exchange rates that link them with others. n11 See Jeffrey E.
Garten, A Cold Peace: America, Japan, Germany, and the Struggle for Supremacy, a Twentieth
Century Fund Book, Times Books, 1992. In this changed world, cooperation among the major
economies in policymaking has become increasingly important. But there are no technical solutions
to the economic problems the world is facing. What is most needed is the political will -- the will of
the United States, Germany, Japan and other major industrial countries to deal more effectively with
their own problems and the will of all the major developed countries to work together for a common
end. The most important challenge for economic cooperation in the years ahead will be to keep the
world economy growing at a vigorous and sustainable pace. With real economic growth the serious
problems of world debt, unbalanced trade, currency disequilibrium and unemployment -- as well as
the social, ethnic, racial and nationalist tensions and the violence to which they give rise -- can be
contained, and progress made toward their solutions.
Growth stops war
Development diversifies exports and increases education, solving the two root causes
of war
Indra de Soysa, senior research associate at the International Peace Research Institute,
2000, in Greed and Grievance, ed. Berdal and Malone, p. 116, p. 127
Collier finds that ethnic heterogeneity and income inequality are mostly unrelated to conflict.
Primary goods exports and average years of schooling in the male population, however, are strongly
related to conflict. A large share of primary goods in exports provides a revenue stream easy to
capture, offering the motivation for rebels to coalesce in seeking loot. The average years of
schooling in the male population measures the opportunity costs for young men to join greedmotivated rebellion. This variable is significantly negatively related to conflict: The higher the level
of education among males, the less likely they are to engage in risky endeavors such as armed
conflict. A country more than one-fourth dependent on primary commodity exports emerges as four
times more likely to be engaged in a conflict than one that is not. Similarly, even a slight increase in
the level of education can decrease the risk of conflict. As Collier puts it, “A country with large
natural resources, many young men, and little education is very much more at risk of conflict than
one with opposite characteristics” (italics added). He concludes that the “true cause of much civil
war is not the loud discourse of grievance, but the silent force of greed.”
He continues…
Higher levels of development usually mean the growth of a stronger manufacturing base and the
diversification of exports. Because exports of primary commodities are strongly related to conflict,
such development will also help reduce the incentives for greed-motivated violence. Again,
development assistance can be targeted toward this end. If resource abundance acts to distort the
processes that lead to better policies, the donor agencies should seek to counteract trends toward
Dutch Disease. To this end, donor agencies could insist on sounder fiscal policies, prevent the
adoption of policies that promote rent-seeking, help identify and alter perverse subsidization that
benefits merely the urban elite, and build institutions that protect property rights. Moreover, the
international community can help with transfer of technology to developing countries and support
the processes of harnessing that technology by promoting investment in human capital. Providing
assistance toward better educational systems will not only discourage recruitment of youths into
rebellion but will also strengthen the longer-term prospects of economic growth and development.
Investment in education will also encourage better government in the longer run that will result in
informed participation in political and economic life. As recent studies of aid effectiveness find, aid
can work wonders in the right policy setting, but it fails in bad ones.” The right policy conditions
cannot simply be imposed but must be accepted by those who benefit from such policies.
Acceptance of certain policies can be achieved only if people are able to understand them.
A2: resource wars
Resource wars are rare
Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, Director of the Centre for the Study of Peace and Conflict
,Professor of Political Science, at the University of Toronto, 1999, Environment,
Scarcity, and Violence, pp. 138-139
Four environmental resources in particular would appear likely to spark simple-scarcity conflicts:
agriculturally productive land, forests, river water, and fish. Scarcity of these renewables is rising
rapidly in some regions; they are often essential for human survival; and they can be physically
seized or controlled. But close study of historical and current cases provides little support for this
idea. There is, in fact, virtually no evidence that environmental scarcity is a principal cause of major
war among modern states. Arthur Westing has compiled a list of twelve conflicts in the twentieth
centuiy involving resources, beginning with World War I and concluding with the
Falklands/Malvinas War. Access to oil or minerals was at issue in ten of these conflicts. Just five
involved renewable resources, and only two of these—the 1969 Soccer War between El Salvador
and Honduras, and the Anglo-Icelandic Cod War of 1972—1973—concerned neither oil nor
minerals (cropland was a factor in the former case, and fish in the latter). But, the Soccer War was
not a simple-scarcity conflict between states; rather, as explained later in this chapter, it arose from
the ecological marginalization of El Salvadoran peasants and their consequent migration into
Honduras. And, because the Cod War, despite its name, involved negligible violence, it hardly
qualifies as a resource war. In general, scholars such as Choucri and North have not adequately
distinguished between scarcities of renewable and nonrenewable resources as causes of international
conflict. They have overlooked two reasons why modern states do not generally fight over
renewable resources. First, states cannot easily convert cropland, forests, and fish seized from a
neighbor into increased state power; although these resources may eventually generate wealth that
can be hamessed by the state for its own ends, this outcome is uncertain and remote in time. In
contrast, states can quickly use nonrenewables like oil and iron to build and fuel the military
machines of national aggression. (Renewables have not always been less important to state power:
in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, for example, shortages of timber for naval ships
contributed to serious, and sometimes violent, conflict among European powers.) Second, countries
with economies highly dependent on renewables tend to be poor, and poor countries cannot easily
buy large and sophisticated conventional armies to attack their neighbors. For these reasons, both
the incentives and the means to launch resource wars are likely to be lower for renewables than for
nonrenewables.
A2: rich/poor gap
Higher incomes among the rich decrease poverty more than gains for the poor
Seth W. Norton, Aldeen Professor of Business at Wheaton College, Fall 2002,
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj22n2/cj22n2-5.pdf, accessed 4/26/03
The pattern that emerges in Table 3 is that the components of the HPI [Human Poverty Index] are
mostly negatively related to the incomes of the poor and the incomes of the rich, as well as to the
geographic variables. Consequently, higher income to either group tends to reduce poverty rates.
The most salient feature in Table 3 is the fact that the coefficients for the rich incomes have a
stronger effect on poverty reduction than the coefficients for the poor incomes. That observation is
true for all cases. Restricted coefficient estimates (Wald’s) tests reveal that the coefficients for the
rich income category are (absolutely) greater than the coefficients for the poor income category for
survival, illiteracy, and undernourished children. The significance tests for access to safe water and
access to health services indicate that while those measures are more sensitive to the incomes of the
rich than to those of the poor, the differences are not statistically significant. More generally and
more importantly, there is no evidence that the income gains to the rich do not benefit the poor, at
least as evidenced by broad and well-established measures of poverty. The results for
undernourished children merit special attention. The coefficient for the rich incomes is negative and
significant, indicating that an increase of rich people’s incomes reduces this measure of children’s
malnutrition. The coefficient for poor peoples’ incomes is slightly positive but not significant.
Presumably, the estimate reflects multicollinearity. Regressing the undernourishment variable on
just the incomes of the poor does lead to a reduction in the proportion of undernourished children.
However, the comparable simple regression estimate for the incomes of the rich is still substantially
greater.2 Thus, the easiest interpretation is that the relationship between the incomes of the rich and
undernourished children is negative and robust, but the relationship between the incomes of the poor
and reduced children’s malnutrition is weaker and perhaps nonexistent. [Spelling-out of Human
Poverty Index not in original. –KLK]
Even if only the rich benefit, they invest in infrastructure that solves for everyone
Seth W. Norton, Aldeen Professor of Business at Wheaton College, Fall 2002,
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj22n2/cj22n2-5.pdf, accessed 4/26/03
Despite the assertions of Marxists, there are simple reasons to presume that _r might exceed _p.
Consider externalities. If the rich inhabitants of a country invest in some infrastructure that helps the
rich, it might also help the poor as the effects of infrastructure “spillover” as benefits to the poor.
Investment in education, for example, is widely perceived to produce positive externalities to the
community. Consider also the interaction between the incomes of the rich, economies of scale, and
the incomes of the poor. If there are economies of scale in the provision of various services (e.g.,
health services and sanitation), then the increases in demand associated with higher incomes of the
rich would generate a lower price and therefore permit poor people to consume more (increasing
their real income), provided the scale economies did not also lead to a higher price due to
diminished competition. Consider the relative consumption versus investment of the rich and poor.
Suppose the poor spend most of their income on subsistence consumption, while the rich invest a
greater part of their income. Under those circumstances, increasing the incomes of the rich would
lead to higher economic growth and could also reduce the average level of poverty in a country.
Growth  democracy
Growth is the only check on brutal dictatorships
Bill Emmott, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, 2003, 20:21 Vision, pp. 15-16
The potential for dictatorship, with associated deadly brutality, is undimmed. The main limiting
factor is economic: centralized control has proved to be a poor way to build a wealthy, modern
economy, and wealthy economies are those most able to afford the latest offensive, defensive or
repressive technologies. Modern, wealthy economies have developed when economic power has
been dispersed to a wide population and when individual enterprise has been given its head. Such
developments make dictatorship harder and repression costlier. But it is far from impossible to
sustain a dictatorship over long periods of time, as the Chinese Communist Party has shown. And
the importance of the economic sacrifice entailed by centrally directed regimes is essentially
relative: it is the growing wealth of other countries, operating in an open market economy, that
makes it harder for a dictatorship to restrain the economic expectations of its own citizens and to
keep up with other countries’ military technology and resources. But if other countries’ economies
become depressed, life for the dictator could well become easier.
Growth solves corruption
Dr Camillo Premoli, International Mineral Research, September 12, 1997, Mining
Journal
1. There is an undeniable correlation between a country's GNP and its Corruption Index. Somewhat
predictably, the poorest countries score high on perceived corruption. But there are several
exceptions: Chile, with its modest GNP, is easily the least corrupted country in South America
(perhaps a factor in its recent mining boom). Conversely Italy, with a GNP superior to either
Australia or the UK, has a level of perceived corruption similar to Bolivia -- a country 20 times
poorer. A telling reality.
Widening inequalities lead to democratic reforms, which solve poverty
Bill Emmott, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, 2003, 20:21 Vision, pp. 244-245
A paper in Harvard’s Quarterly Journal of Economics in November 2000, by Daron Acemoglu and
James A. Robinson, provided empirical evidence to support what common sense would suggest had
been the case: that the major democratic reforms (extending the franchise, and so on) in Britain,
Germany, France and Sweden in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries all coincided with
peaks in inequality. In other words, a widening of inequality brought about social and political
pressure for reform, which the established elites responded to by providing the discontented with
greater democratic representation. The elastic stretched; and for fear that it might break, bringing on
violence and turmoil, political reforms were offered and accepted. This, in turn, has had a levelling
effect. For, in time, democratic reform influences those in government: those seeking election will
make sure that their policies are of broad benefit to those who they hope will vote for them. Hence
the provision of, and improvement of access to, public education and other services; hence the
granting of steadily greater rights and protections for ordinary workers; hence the gradual
introduction, even without pressure from socialists, of progressive taxation, by which governments
could draw more of their revenue from the few than from the many. The effect of this on posttax
incomes is complex, since taxes alter people’s behavior. But, as a general rule, it has narrowed the
gap between posttax incomes. The other big effect of democracy on inequalities of income and
wealth has been to make societies, or rather political establishments, less tolerant of high levels of
unemployment. “Let them eat cake” is no longer a viable or acceptable reaction. The result has been
that, in the democracies, efforts have either been made to try to reduce unemployment or to make
unemployment less disastrous financially by expanding welfare benefits. That has been less true of
the United States than of Western Europe or Japan, but, beginning with the “New Deal” of the
193os, it has nevertheless been the American trend too.
Cap is inevitable – must work within it
Capitalism is inevitable; activists should strive to ensure it develops in a positive
manner
Bill Emmott, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, 2003, 20:21 Vision, pp. 26-27
Since all the progress that has been, and will be, seen in technology and in general welfare has
arisen from capitalist activities, and since no alternative set of ideas has emerged to give hope to
poorer countries that they can match the rich world’s progress by adopting anything other than
capitalism, it might seem reasonable to assume that capitalism is likely to be simply a given for the
twenty-first century. One way or another, it will be a feature of life during the next hundred years.
That is surely true. But all the difference in the world, and for the world, is contained in that phrase,
“one way or another.” How much technology develops, how it develops, how well-off we become
in material terms, how big a problem the relative poverty of the underdeveloped world will pose for
the developed countries, how the planet’s environment serves to limit or enable our activities and
circumscribe or enhance our lives: all these questions depend on the way capitalism develops, or
rather the way it is allowed to develop. This, too, like the role of leadership in preserving peace, is
probably an eternal question. Our feelings about capitalism have always been and probably always
will be mixed. Capitalism works. It appeals to the inherently competitive instinct in man, the instinct
that to survive and thrive one must compete, and that to compete one must take risks.
There is no alternative to globalization
Deirdre Curtin, Utrecht University, “Sovereignty, Democracy And The Outcomes Of
The 2001 Wto Ministerial,” 2001,
http://www.cedla.uva.nl/pdf/Democracy%20and%20the%20WTO%20fourth%20session.
pdf, accessed 8/30/03
Now we see a serious clash between people who see globalization as a good thing and people who
see it as a bad thing? What is striking though, is those who believe it as a bad thing have not really
put forward an alternative to it. They are proposing a negative, epitomized by ‘shrink or sink’. They
are the anti-globalists, and may be it is in the nature of their argument that they shouldn’t put
forward a positive vision of how trade and other relations should be structured across borders in a
global sense. But they can be accused of an ostrich-like behaviour in terms of latching on to the
familiar and ignoring the current-day realities of an increasingly networked and technologically
charged world, in the context of which it is impossible to go back to the good old days of state
control, to define borders and slower and more old fashioned methods of communication.
No alt kills criticism
Resistance to capitalism is meaningless unless a stable alternative and process of
change can be outlined
Richard Rorty, philosopher, Achieving Our Country, 1998, p. 103-104.
The Sixties did not ask how the various groups of stakeholders were to reach a consensus about
when to remodel a factory rather than build a new one, what prices to pay for raw materials, and the
like. Sixties leftists skipped lightly over all the questions which had been raised by the experience of
nonmarket economies in the so-called socialist countries. They seemed to be suggesting that once
we were rid of both bureaucrats and entrepreneurs, “the people” would know how to handle
competition from steel mills or textile factories in the developing world, price hikes on imported oil,
and so on. But they never told us how “the people” would learn how to do this. The cultural Left
still skips over such questions. Doing so is a consequence of its preference for talking about “the
system” rather than about specific social practices and specific changes in those practices. The
rhetoric of this Left remains revolutionary rather than reformist and pragmatic. Its insouciant use of
terms like “late capitalism” suggests that we can just wait for capitalism to collapse, rather than
figuring out what, in the absence of markets, will set prices and regulate distribution. The voting
public, the public which must be won over if the Left is to emerge from the academy into the public
square, sensibly wants to be told the details. It wants to know how things are going to work after
markets are put behind us. It wants to know how participatory democracy is supposed to function.
The cultural Left offers no answers to such demands for further information, but until it confronts
them it will not be able to be a political Left. The public, sensibly, has no interest in getting rid of
capitalism until it is offered details about the alternatives. Nor should it be interested in participatory
democracy—the liberation of the people from the power of the technocrats—until it is told how
deliberative assemblies will acquire the same know-how which only the technocrats presently
possess. Even someone like myself, whose admiration for John Dewey is almost unlimited, cannot
take seriously his defense of participatory democracy against Walter Lippmann’s insistence on the
need for expertise.
Individual resistance fails
Ted Trainer, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Social Work, University of
New South Wales, 1995, The Conserver Society, pp. 211-212
When confronted with the limits to growth view there is a tendency to conclude that one ought to
change one’s own lifestyle in conserver society directions. This is indisputably desirable and
worthwhile, but I want to argue that it is in general far from the most important commitment. First,
it is not at all easy for most people to change their lifestyles far in the direction of conserver society
while they are living within this society. Most of us have little choice but to have a car, buy food
that has been transported a long way, use sewers, and work in a job of questionable social worth.
Again, the main problems are the structures and systems within which we are trapped. These
condemn most of us to doing a lot of consuming and polluting. We can with effort change some
things about our lifestyle, e.g., many of us could grow more food and wear out old clothes. But we
will not get to conserver society through individuals resolving to change their personal lifestyles
because most of the problem is to do with social structures, not lifestyles. Individual decisions to
live more simply will not contribute much to getting those town banks established or to planting
edible landscape beside the railway lines, because such decisions will not help more people to
understand and eventually vote for those structural changes.
Seeking individual change is fruitless
Lester W. Milbrath, Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Sociology at SUNYBuffalo, 1996, in Building Sustainable Societies, ed. Pirages, p. 289
In some respects personal change cannot be separated from societal change. Societal transformation
will not be successful without change at the personal level; such change is a necessary but not
sufficient step on the route to sustainability. People hoping to live sustainably must adopt new
beliefs, new values, new lifestyles, and new worldview. But lasting personal change is unlikely
without simultaneous transformation of the socioeconomic/political system in which people
function. Persons may solemnly resolve to change, but that resolve is likely to weaken as they
perform day-to-day within a system reinforcing different beliefs and values. Change agents typically
are met with denial and great resistance. Reluctance to challenge mainstream society is the major
reason most efforts emphasizing education to bring about change are ineffective. If societal
transformation must be speedy, and most of us believe it must, pleading with individuals to change
is not likely to be effective.
Protest doesn’t change the system
Protest doesn’t undermine the system – Seattle proves
Brink Lindsey, senior fellow at Cato, “Globaloney Dying,” February 5, 2002,
http://www.techcentralstation.com/020502C.html, accessed 9/6/03
From its inception, the protest movement was less than met the eye. Some 30,000 demonstrators
gathered in Seattle in November 1999 on the occasion of the World Trade Organization's ministerial
conference. Meetings were disrupted, the city was trashed, and ultimately the WTO ministers failed
to agree on a new round of trade talks. But most of the numbers in Seattle were peaceful marchers
supplied by organized labor - a good, old-fashioned parochial interest group that had little in
common, ideologically or culturally, with the radical activists and "anarchist" goons that grabbed all
the media attention. And the failure of the WTO meeting had little to do with the commotion
outside. Rather, the Clinton administration's insistence on negotiating WTO labor standards, and
European and Japanese foot-dragging on agricultural liberalization, were the real culprits.
Radicalism  Right wing rollback
Right-wing groups will squash their movement and bring global fascism
Martin W. Lewis, associate research professor of geography, co-director of Comparative
Area Studies, Duke University, 1992, Green Delusions, pp. 170-171
The extreme left, for all its intellectual strength, notably lacks the kind of power necessary to
emerge victorious from a real revolution. A few old street radicals may still retain their militant
ethos, but today’s college professors and their graduate students, the core marxist contingent, would
be ineffective. The radical right, on the other hand, would present a very real threat. Populist rightwing paramilitary groups are well armed and well trained, while establishment-minded fascists
probably have links with the American military, wherein lies the greatest concentration of
destructive power this planet knows. Should a crisis strike so savagely as to splinter the American
center and its political institutions, we could well experience a revolutionary movement similar to
that of Germany in the 1930s. Marxists, however, would likely counter this argument by citing the
several cases of successful socialist revolutions. Successful though they were, none makes a
compelling analogue. First, no marxist revolution has ever come close to occurring in an advanced
capitalist nation. Triumphant leftist revolutions have only taken place in economically backward
countries, and generally only after an unrelated war had demoralized the old guard. More
importantly, as Hamerow (1990) clearly shows, all successful marxian revolutions have relied on
the strategic cooperation of the bourgeoisie against the aristocracy; only after the old regime is
toppled are the fractionated moderates cut out of power. Considering the fate that has generally
befallen them under such circumstances, it is unlikely that the business classes—even in the world’s
more feudal countries—would again be tempted by the promises of a mixed economy offered to
them by would-be leftist revolutionaries. Except perhaps in El Salvador and Peru, contemporary
marxist revolutionary movements are irritants to the ruling elites rather than real threats. In
contemplating the likely future of a revolutionary United States, we encounter the ultimate paradox
of contemporary marxism: the unintended collusion of the radical left and the radical right. Even
during periods of normality, the opposing ends of the political spectrum feed strongly on each
other—in sardonic fashion, they are each other’s best allies. The marxian left is extraordinarily
frightening to the vast majority of the populace, and the stronger it becomes, the more seductive the
propaganda of the radical right grows. The equation can also be reversed; leftist rhetoric draws its
real power in opposition to the radical right, not the accommodating center. With every KKK
outrage, with every atrocity committed by the Los Angeles Police Department, the marxian message
grows ever more convincing to horrified progressives. The broad center of responsible
conservatives, moderates, and liberals may attempt to remain dispassionate and to refute both
extremes, but in a deteriorating political environment, marked by inflamed passions, such a stance
will seem to many increasingly inadequate. If, in the event of extraordinary crisis, the center does
fold, I must conclude that most Americans would follow the far right rather than the far left.
American society has simply been too prosperous, and the majority of its citizens too accustomed to
owning property, to be willing to risk everything on a communist experiment. Alexander Cockburn
of The Nation has repeatedly pleaded with liberals not be afraid to endorse socialism—a fine
position indeed if one would like to see reactionaries gain uncontested power throughout the United
States. If truly concerned about social justice and environmental protection, I would counter liberals
should not be afraid first to embrace, and then seek to reform, capitalism.
Economic Downturn  War
Economic decline leads to nuclear war
Chris H. Lewis Professor at UC Boulder, "The Coming Age of Scarcity" p. 56 1998
Most critics would argue, probably correctly, that instead of allowing underdeveloped countries to
withdraw from the global economy and undermine the economies of the developed world, the United
States, Europe, and Japan and others will fight neocolonial wars to force these countries to remain within
this collapsing global economy. These neocolonial wars will result in mass death, suffering, and even
regional nuclear wars. If first world countries choose military confrontation and political repression to
maintain the global economy, then we may see mass death and genocide on a global scale that will make
the deaths of World War II pale in comparison. However, these neocolonial wars, fought to maintain
the developed nations' economic and political hegemony, will cause the final collapse of our global
industrial civilization. These wars will so damage the complex economic and trading networks and
squander material, biological and energy resources that they will undermine the global economy and its
ability to support the earth's 6 to 8 billion people. This would be the worst case scenario for the collapse of
global civilization