We always hear that capitalism is the best possible system.
We often hear “Communists killed 70 mill ppl in china”.
And if you search for it you will find people on the left claiming that capitalism kills
more people than that.
So we are going to have a look at the real facts and come to our own conclusion.
In this video we will look at how many deaths capitalism causes and in the follow up video
we will examine how many deaths communism caused.
Before we can really see how many people die because of capitalism, we have to define what
it is.
The Oxford English dictionary says capitalism is “an economic system in which a country’s
businesses and industry are controlled and run for profit by private owners rather than
by the government” This can be summed up as the private ownership of industry and land
as well as the institution of the free market.
Using this definition capitalism exists in every country on earth except like…
North Korea so we will treat it as a global system.
All of us know that where there is profit people work and where there is no profit they
don’t.
That’s a very basic feature of the market.
Only work if you can make a profit of it.
If, for example, a lot of people need water someone would set up a shop and supply them
with the water they need.
And that’s how it’s supposed to work and that’s how it usually works.
But not always.
Sometimes the people who need water have no money, other times they will be competing
with richer people who need the water to shower or …like…flush their toilets or whatever.
Since the person distributing the water will follow the law of the free market he will
sell the water to the rich people who offer more.
This will lead to people who need it having no water.
Of course ideally someone else will set up shop and give water to those without but in
reality that doesn’t always happen, which is due to the fact that it’s more profitable
to take a fraction of the profit in a rich area than to supply a poor area.
So, if someone dies because the ones who own and distribute the water have no incentive,
or an incentive that is too small, that would then be a death that can legitimately be blamed
on capitalism.
Since the only way capitalism supplies people with goods is the free market.
Now let’s look at some numbers, how many people die because of the free market?
An interesting one is that it’s estimated that we produce enough food for 10 Billion
people each year while there are only 7.5 Billion people on earth yet one in 8 people
“lack the food to live a healthy life”.
This obviously isn’t a problem of production but of distribution.
The food gets produced but it’s not profitable to send it to the poor regions in Africa so
they don’t do it and that leads to hunger, starvation and death.
I think it’s fair to attribute those deaths to capitalism since hypothetically, if we
had a system that gives everyone the exact same amount of food everyone would be overweight
and nobody would have to starve.
I am not saying that that would be the best system, but this thought experiment shows
that those deaths are very much the fault of the free market.
So now that we know this let’s look at the real numbers.
We begin with the obvious question.
How many people starve each year?
I’ve looked at multiple sources and most say that over 9 Million people are expected
to starve each year, this number is increasing as the effects of climate change increase.
Furthermore 820 Million lack the food to live a healthy life as I mentioned before.
Next let’s look at the people who die from a lack of water treatment.
It’s about 3.5 Million people annually who have to die because it’s too expensive for
the free market to supply them.
Another 3 Million die of preventable diseases because they lack healthcare which could be
supplied but not for free so the market doesn’t do it.
Just like with water and food.
We are at 15.5 Million each year.
Since 2000 that’s almost 300 Million (‭294.5 Million) people who had to die because the
free market doesn’t care for them.
That’s the holocaust times 50.
Obviously this is way more than you and I expected so I checked the numbers but it’s
true.
That’s how many died because the market either could not or would not support them.‬
‬‬‬ That sure makes you think doesn’t it?
Remember we didn’t just take random things and blamed capitalism.
I only counted deaths that could be averted in an alternative, albeit imaginary, economic
system.
Starvation, Dehydration and lack of vaccination can be solved, just not by the free market.
So I guess this means that if someone says they support capitalism they will have to
explain how they justify those deaths.
Capitalism sure has created many things like iPhones, cars, banks, billionaires, advertisements,
endless wars, air travel, computers, wealth inequality, roads, highways, cities, mass
starvation and plenty of very pretty buildings for the wealthy BUT in the end we have to
ask our self if that justifies 15.5 Million lives each year.
I think it’s strange that there is no conversation on this, surely everyone should know that
the system we use causes so much death.
I guess that opens the question on why we never talk about the death caused by our economic
system but always just the past ones like communism and feudalism.
Feel free to tell me your explanation in the comments.
If you want to see my video on the death toll of communism click the video on screen or
if there is none there subscribe so you won’t miss it when I upload it.
Thanks for watching.
Cya