Good capitalism, bad capitalism, and the economics of growth and prosperity

Abstract

RESUMEN Many books take off from one core idea. This book is built on two. The first notion is that capitalism is not a monolithic form of economic organization but rather that it takes many forms, which differ substantially in terms of their implications for economic growth and elimination of poverty. The implicit assumption underlying the idea of a ho mogenous capitalism, the notion that all capitalist economies are funda mentally the same, reflects something of the mentality common during the cold war when two superpowers, representing two great ideologies, were struggling for the hearts and minds of peoples of the world. On the one side were countries like the United States, whose economies rested on the foundation of the private ownership of property, and on the other were communist or socialist societies, whose economies essentially did not. This distinction seemed to divide the two economic systems, and not much thought was given to the possibility that there is much more to capitalism.