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Feb. 24, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
09:01
1859 The Truth About Freedom - 300 Million Souls Escape Poverty!

A graphical presentation of some of the most common questions I get about freedom, peace and poverty.

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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
This is Facts About Freedom.
It's a short presentation of some essential facts that you need to know about freedom.
And by freedom here, I mean the non-initiation of force against peaceful traitors with respect for property rights.
Eliminating poverty. This is a graphic I get asked about all the time, so let's talk about it a bit.
We're so close and yet so far to eliminating poverty because of a central tragedy in the way that people think.
So, some basic facts. From the 1950s through the late 1960s, the United States cut poverty by 50%, from over 22% to 11%.
Cut poverty by 50% in 10-15 years.
This is before the welfare state as we know it.
This is before teachers couldn't be fired.
This is before Poverty programs for the poor to help them with costs of every kind.
So poverty was being eliminated before the welfare state came in.
When the welfare state comes in, the war on poverty, the war on illiteracy, the war on drugs, all these wars declared by the government to solve all these social problems, these problems were being solved through peaceful trade and, as you can see here from the blue line in the graph, a growth in income.
People were becoming less poor because their income was growing.
Their incomes were growing Because the economy was growing.
The economy was growing because the government wasn't initiating force against peaceful producers, and so they were free to trade and grow and make profits and increase the general wealth of society, which cut poverty.
What changed? Well, of course, in the mid-1960s, you get all these social programs coming in, which shovels a huge amount of money at the poor.
And if you pay people to stay poor, they will, by golly, stay poor.
It's hugely tragic. It's a limitation of thinking, a limitation of imagination, and it's easy to understand, right?
We've all seen these pictures, like, there's some big skyscraper and a city line of lights and airplanes, and then there's some, in front, there's some bearded, wild-haired guy living in a box.
And we say, oh, we're just going to take a little bit of money, a little bit of money from this immense wealth of the city and devote it to this poor guy living in a box and we'll get rid of a great evil and social injustice and all that.
It's a really tempting idea.
And it is false.
It is wrong. It's immoral.
Of course, the initiation of force to redistribute income is immoral.
And it's counterproductive in the long run, for sure.
However much it may satisfy people's moral crusade urges in the short run, it does not conform with the facts.
It changes the very structure of society.
And here we see that poverty was being eliminated anyway.
But in order to accelerate that process, what's happened is a permanent underclass and permanent and ever-growing underclass of poor people has been created in the United States.
Tragic. Let's look at India.
Suppose I said there was a program that could bring 300 million people out of poverty in 20 years.
The entire population of the US. Would you think that's possible?
What program would it be?
And I said, well, it's doing nothing.
It's doing less. It's getting rid of government.
Well, you might be skeptical.
I can understand that, but these are the facts.
Let's look at this graph. This is China, India, and Brazil.
Percentage of population living below $1.25 a day at $2,005.
China, a completely astounding, mind-blowing.
We'll get to that in a sec. But India, look at India here.
So it goes over 40% to just over 20%.
And it's even better now, because these economies have continued to grow, unlike the West, which is dying under state coercion.
And so what happened?
Well, in 1991, India opened itself up for international trade and investment.
It deregulated, which means it stopped initiating force against peaceful traders.
It privatized state industries, tax reforms, and inflation-controlling measures.
In other words, it stopped printing money so badly to bribe its constituents.
This is after many decades of Nero-inspired socialism which was derived from the British academic socialism of the pre- and post-war period.
Just tragic. So what's happened?
Well, as of 2009 about 300 million people have escaped extreme poverty.
This is the entire population of the United States.
Anybody who's at all seriously interested In helping poor people needs to look at this and look at what happened and re-examine what they propose to deal with poverty in the real world, in the future.
It's like a China. A million people per month escaping poverty, a million people per month.
China's astounding. Almost 80% of people in 1980 lived below $1.25 a day.
Now, 15%, 10%.
It's even better, this graph, when it goes up to 2005.
Well, what happened at the beginning of this period?
They de-collectivized agriculture, which means don't initiate the use of force against peaceful traders, respect their property rights.
Opened up China to foreign investment.
They actually allowed entrepreneurs to start up businesses.
Amazing! And this was after decades of the most brutal socialistic experimentation and communistic destruction that can be imagined.
There was another phase in the late 1980s.
They privatized and contracted out much of the state-owned industries, lifting price controls, which always caused shortages, got rid of protectionist policies and regulations, and allowed people to freely trade.
The private sector, as a result, grew remarkably, accounting for as much as 70% of China's GDP by 2005.
This is larger in comparison to many Western nations.
The British government controls more of the British economy than the communist Chinese government controls of the Chinese economy, which is sad, of course, when you think of how many people died in the Second World War fighting socialism, but this is a way forward.
This is a fascinating thing to look at.
This is the largest poverty reduction program, if you can call it a program, that has ever occurred in the history of the planet, in the history of the planet, and it's been 20 to 25 years.
That's all. From 1978 to 2010, the Chinese economy increased by 9.5% a year.
9.5% a year.
Now, people will say, yes, but the environmental problems will come with that and so on.
Well, that's nonsense.
I mean, that is complete nonsense, and it's an embarrassing argument to hear for a number of reasons.
First of all, of course, we went through our filthy black-sooted industrial revolution, and now we can say, are we really going to say to other people, you can't?
Of course not. Secondly, I've never, ever heard anybody say, Argue that we should keep Americans or Canadians or British people in poverty so that they don't consume more resources.
I've never heard that argument made at all.
And of course the way that you get to a better environment is through increased wealth.
So that you can afford scrubbers for your factory chimneys, so you can give people Kindles instead of bringing down all these trees, so that you can actually help the environment through wealth.
It's the creation of wealth that helps the environment the most and reduces population, of course.
The best contraception is industrialization.
Here's another example, global free trade, particularly in agriculture.
According to some significantly intense research, free trade, global free trade is just getting rid of protectionist barriers, getting rid of the dumping of agricultural crops from Western countries into third world countries, which is wretched and reprehensible for the local agriculture.
Just free trade alone, estimated to lift another 540 million people out of poverty in 10 to 15 years.
Amazing! Liberalization of agriculture would account for about half of the total gains for both developing and industrial countries.
It would be worth 200 billion dollars a year to developing nations compared to the 50 billion or so that they get in foreign aid at the moment, which mostly goes to dictators so that they can buy weapons and pay their military.
Getting rid of agricultural subsidies.
It's been done before. New Zealand in the 90s, I think, got rid of almost all their agricultural subsidies.
Did not fall into the sea or blow up like Krakatoa, but people just adjusted.
It's difficult, but it's possible.
So these are just some basic facts.
I really urge you to look into the astounding poverty reduction situations or systems that are in place around the world that is creating an absolute explosion, unprecedented explosion of human potential, human possibility, human wealth creation.
Really strongly urge you to look into that.
Throw aside your ideology, your preconceptions about how to help the poor.
It's kind of paternalistic, you know, kind of condescending to say let's help the poor.
I say, just stay out of their way.
Just stay out of the poor people's way.
Don't initiate force against peaceful traitors, respect their property rights, and the world's problems are solved thereby.
I hope you've enjoyed the presentation.
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