Liberals will point to how improvements in quality of life have occurred in capitalist countries in recent centuries (debatable, and certainly not true for the entire world, but let’s assume they are correct for now). What is usually implied is that it’s all thanks to capitalism that we have the quality of life that we do, thus capitalism should be allowed to continue.
The thought I had was, do most of the quality of life improvements come down mostly to how agriculture and medicine developed? Meaning, famines were a harsh reality of life for much of human history, and modern agriculture has allowed us to now be in a position where globally, we can produce more than enough food consistently for the whole planet.
Likewise in regards to medicine… in the past just getting sick could be a death sentence. People had to live with incredibly painful conditions their whole life that we now have cures for. Honestly modern medicine is the one reason why I would rather live in 2023 than any other time.
What I’m getting at is… though these advances did occur under capitalism, I don’t think I would give capitalism the “credit” for them. Obviously socialism was not possible 200 years ago. I’m not denying standard Marxist historical progression. What I am doing though, is trying to attack the liberal narrative of treating capitalism as some god who has bestowed his mercy on us - that everything good we have is from Him, and thus we must give Him our praise and continue on His economic system into eternity.
The Soviet Union and China were/are both able to be incredibly productive in agriculture and ended their historic, periodic famines. The Soviet Union (and Cuba!) were/are renowned for their advances in medicine.
I think the only things you can give capitalism “credit” for is developing the productive forces, allowing for high levels of commodity production, and increasing levels of wealth (though not equally shared).
I disagree on your points about medicine. The last 100 years have seen incredible growth in our ability to reduce mortality. Sepsis, pneumonia and tuberculosis were death sentences that got humbled by antibiotics, the ongoing rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria still pales in the face of the untold millions saved from death and disability by antibiotics. Type 1 Diabetes, also a death sentence, can be managed by insulin that is affordable to manufacture, we just choose the greediest, stupidest way of distributing it. Death from anaphylaxis is largely a bygone thing thanks to epinephrine. Death from dehydration (which is how many childhood and tropical diseases like Ebola* kill) can be mitigated with IV saline. Children with asthma can be saved from death or hypoxic brain injury thanks to Albuterol and asthma controllers. Blood transfusions, TXA, and reliable, clean, readily available orthopedic surgery have all proven incredibly useful in mitigating death secondary to Trauma. You don’t have to dig very deep into the last 100-150 or so years of medicine to see that we’ve come an incredible distance in a lot of places in modern medicine.
This, to me, is the most exasperating part of privatized healthcare. A lot of these incredible innovations are neither very new, nor vastly complicated undertakings, and yet we still ration and price them as though they are, because the rent must be sought.
*The overwhelming majority of Ebola’s victims die of dehydration secondary to massive, massive diarrhea. The hemorrhagic manifestation doesn’t always happen and is the less common cause of death.