The capitalist manifesto
In his book Das Kapitalistische Manifest (published in Germany in 2003, the Swedish original Till världskapitalismens försvar appeared in 2001), the Swedish political scientist Johan Norberg advocates worldwide free trade and calls for the abolition of protectionism in the form of trade barriers and tariffs .
Norberg vehemently denies the accusations of globalization critics that the poor worldwide are getting worse and worse. He refers u. a. on UNDP -Statistics showing that the number of those who in absolute poverty , have been reduced by 200 million live, and that in a few decades. Norberg writes: "UNDP, the United Nations development program, has found that over the past 50 years poverty has decreased more than in the previous 500 years combined."
The reason for this is capitalism, according to Norberg: “The higher the degree of economic liberalization in a country, the greater the chance of more prosperity , faster growth , a higher standard of living and longer life expectancy. In the countries with the greatest economic freedom, people are almost ten times as rich as in the countries with the least freedom and live more than 20 years longer! "
Book reviews
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on December 21, 2003 ranked the work among the ten best business books of 2003.
Norbert Blüm , Federal Minister for Labor and Social Affairs in the Kohl government , opens his review with the sentence: "I have seldom read so much nonsense in one book as in Norberg's 'Capitalist Manifesto'".
literature
- Johan Norberg: The Capitalist Manifesto. Why the globalized market economy alone secures human prosperity. Eichborn Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 2003 - ISBN 3-8218-3994-5