Opponents of The Concept
Opponents of the concept often invoke market efficiency to argue that free trade and capitalism will make everybody wealthy eventually. Proponents counter that the ongoing process of multinational corporations channeling wealth from poorer countries to richer ones dictates that the gap will not diminish.
Available data indicates convergence of income for many developing countries.
In his book The Ultimate Resource Julian Simon offers view that scarcity of physical resources can be overcome by human mind. For example the argument of scarcity of oil could be overcome by some of energy development strategies, such as use of synthetic fuels.
Concerning exploitation of the former colonies Gregory Clark notes "Yet generations of research by economic historians - David Landes, Deirdre McCloskey, and Joel Mokyr, among others - show that the wealth of the West was homegrown, the result of a stream of Western technological advances since the Industrial Revolution").
Read more about this topic: Golden Billion
Famous quotes containing the words opponents and/or concept:
“The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“The heritage of the American Revolution is forgotten, and the American government, for better and for worse, has entered into the heritage of Europe as though it were its patrimony—unaware, alas, of the fact that Europe’s declining power was preceded and accompanied by political bankruptcy, the bankruptcy of the nation-state and its concept of sovereignty.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)