Question

Vandana Shiva’s essay, “Two Myths that keep the World Poor” argues that Western capitalist ideas of economic development are in fact responsible for keeping much of the world in poverty. Write an essay that responds to Shiva’s argument and that uses research to make an argument about how to address the problem of poverty in the developing world. Research may include theoretical economic arguments and/or specific examples of strategies that are being/have been used in particular situations.

The essay should have correct sources regarding the essay in MLA style consisting (1500-2000 words).

The thesis statement must be refined over the course of this assignment. Make a coherent argument that takes into account all significant points of view on the subject. The points should be supporting, convincing and clearly connected to the thesis statement. The uses of secondary sources must effectively build the argument. Write a Research paper based on this.

Answer 1

The World Is Poor because of capitalism is one of the most negative points to hear as a research topic. Over the years, the world has become one unified market space, because of the help of globalization which has rapidly changed the dynamics of international trade.

Capitalists are interested in profits and rightfully so. The main aim of any business house is to make profits and while socialism might insist on giving away products for a cheaper price, Capitalists argue that market forces be used to determine the price of a product and rightly so.

The concepts of socialism argue that a countries resources should be equally distributed among the rich and the poor. However, in the long run having such a straetgy is not going to be helpful for the society at large.

To blame one section of the society for the vows of another are incorrect. The West has seen major developments because of the fact that it has enabled and embraced capitalism so well.

Capitalism helps in promoting competetion in the market than having organisations which become prone to redudancy and lethargy as in case of most socialist economies of the world.

Further countries that run on the socialist model which says that equality for all must override profits have failed more than often to be able to do any good for the poor of the country. This is evident from the growth trajectories of countries such as China and India.

These countries, set their economic journey on the concepts of socialism and heavily failed because it led to the creation of inefficient organisations and wide scale unemployment and undergrowth occurred.

The West created an idea of minimum goverment intervention in business and that the government pay its attention only on specific industries such as defence, roadways, railways etc which are extremely critical.

Slowly and gradualy the world has accepted this as the optimum mode. Poverty in countries has existed not because of the prevelance of capitalism but because of other factors such as lack of education, infrastructure and other critical facilities.

These facilities often lack because countries have failed to generate sufficient revenue to fund them over the years. How often, we hear in the eastern countries a lack of capital exists to fund these.

Capitalism on the other hand tries to correct the problem. This ensures that free competition exists in the market that helps in better innovation and has resulted in better products than just need satisfying ones.

Over the years, the trajectory of those countries that have embraced the concepts of capitalism have clearly indicated how and why they have been able to iradicate poverty in the nation. Capitalism aims at creating an economy, in which consumer orientation is the greatest i.e the country produces those products that are higher in demand and increased competition tends to cause more jobs in all industries & because of this increased economic activity and flow of money the country begins to irradicate poverty and is able to form a growth pattern which is appropriate for the country.

Take the example of India & China which were earlier built on socialist ideology but had to change their attention owing to the fact that they failed to deliver their promises to the public.

Socialism creates bigger problems than capitalism will. Capitalism lays its foundations on making more profits but it is to be remembered that these organisations are never free from government and public scrutiny but rather have always been transparent about their operations and the government can focus on appropriate issues.

On the other hand, socialism lays focus to equal distribution of resources and income which in real life is impossible without the zeal to innovate and increase consumer demand in the economy.

Please feel free to ask your doubts in the comments section