The Revolutionary Socialist Network, Workers
AR -- Ext: Cap Good - Human Rights
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- Cap good – the way society is structured enables us to harness capitalist endeavors for the benefit of everyone
1AR -- Ext: Cap Good - Human RightsCapitalism is the best and most inclusive system for promoting human rightsNovak 15 [Michael Novak, 3-23-2015, "Capitalism Is the Most Moral of a Bad Lot of Economic Systems," No Publication, https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/25/has-capitalism-become-incompatible-with-christianity/capitalism-is-the-most-moral-of-a-bad-lot-of-economic-systems, smarx, HHW] In answering the question, much depends on what you mean by capitalism. I like the definition offered by Pope John Paul II: "an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector ... circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality.'' With a polity and a culture that honor and promote the creativity and flourishing of humankind, capitalism is the most moral of a bad lot of economic systems known to humans. First, no other system has so quickly and so globally lifted the poor out of poverty. If you look at a chart of population and income since the beginning of the Christian era, the line of growth is nearly flat for 18 centuries, and then with the introduction of invention and discovery it shoots upward. Second, no other system has so deeply grasped that the cause of the wealth of nations is, as John Paul II said, “the possession of know-how, technology and skill,” “disciplined and creative human work and, as an essential part of that work, initiative and entrepreneurial ability.” Third, no other system has so depended both on law – to set clear rules and to protect and guide liberty – and on moral virtues, a concrete vision of how to improve the common good by discovery and invention. It requires the willingness to make sacrifices for gains only future generations will see, to persist through many setbacks and to surrender many pleasures in exchange for disciplined, self-adapting work. Fourth, in the two centuries since the birth of capitalism the average life expectancy has risen from 26 to 67. Earth is teeming with human life as never before. In 1800, there were fewer than one billion humans on the planet; today there are over seven billion. In at least that sense, capitalism has vastly expanded the domain of life. Pope Francis decries an “economy of exclusion.” Similarly, John Paul II emphasized the moral obligation to include every woman and man in “the circle of development.” To include all of the forgotten people of Latin America (let alone Africa and Asia), some 20 million new small businesses need to be formed, each employing three to six workers at decent wages. In many jurisdictions this would mean changing laws, to allow new small businesses to be registered at minimal cost and without the need to pay bribes to officials. It would also mean building new organizations to specialize in micro-loans for small businesses – and also in providing practical advice so that new businesses more easily succeed. Nearly the whole world is much in favor of this inclusion. No one should be excluded from the global circle of development. Cap good – the way society is structured enables us to harness capitalist endeavors for the benefit of everyoneBoix 19 [Carles Boix, American political scientist specializing in comparative politics, currently teaching at Princeton University, 2019, Democratic Capitalism At The Crossroads: Technological Change And The Future Of Politics," Princeton University Press, SMarx, JTong] In this book, I take a different approach. The consequences of today’s technological changes, I will claim, are not set in stone. They will work their way into the economy through their direct (although, at this point, still uncertain) impact on the demand for different types of labor and on the cost and ownership of capital. Yet they will also depend on the institutional and political strategies we follow in response to those technological transformations. During the last two hundred years, in their quest for profits and wealth, the entrepreneurs and industrial captains of modern capitalism have always pushed for the rationalization and automation of production. That “process of industrial mutation”, to employ Schumpeter’s renowned words, “incessantly revolutionize[d] the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one”—modifying the relationship between capital and labor, the patterns of employment, and the distribution of income over time (Schumpeter 1950, 83). In doing so, it periodically generated a (changing) number of critical political challenges that were then met with a particular set of policy responses. The same logic applies to today’s technological innovations. Because they have already heightened economic inequality and may result in an even more extensive robotization of substantial numbers of (low- and semiskilled) jobs, they could put an end to the broad social consensus around democracy and capitalism that prevailed during most of the twentieth century—particularly in the advanced world. That does not necessarily mean, however, that they will—and that they will make us travel back in time to the nineteenth century, when the industrial capitalism invented in Manchester and its cotton factories turned out to be incompatible with the construction of fully democratic institutions. The reason is simple. The growing economic and political tensions we are witnessing today are happening in very affluent societies: their average per capita incomes are more than ten times higher than at the beginning of the first Industrial Revolution. So much wealth, jointly with the presence of stable democratic institutions and relatively well structured bureaucracies, should give us much more maneuvering room than any generations before us ever had to respond to the technological and economic challenges of today. Therefore, the task ahead of us is to think about how to harness those economic and institutional assets to the advantage of the many. With that goal in mind, we should understand, first, how technology has shaped capitalism and, second, when and how the latter has coexisted, sometimes in a delicate, uneasy balance, with democracy. I explain this, necessarily in a sketchy manner, in this introduction by describing how modern capitalism has evolved in terms of its structure of production (i.e., the level of automation and the role of labor) and its relationship to politics—from the first Industrial Revolution born in Manchester through the twentiethcentury capitalism invented in Detroit’s assembly plants up to the new information era that emerged in Silicon Valley. In the rest of the book, I develop that argument more extensively, mainly focusing on the nature of twentieth-century democratic capitalism and, above all, on the challenges and opportunities brought about by today’s technological revolution. Download 2.09 Mb. Share with your friends:
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