I quote from your post “The world was most peaceful from 1815-1914 when it was closest to Capitalism. England, the then freest nation was the richest.”
Kindly throw some light on how you decided upon the most peaceful era of the world? What are the parameters you use to judge “peace”?

Where I come from, which I assume is also where you come from, there were mass starvation and hunger deaths, unimaginable famines costing lives in tens of millions within a gap of few years, agrarian riots, widespread poverty, racial discrimination, wide economic disparity and destruction of traditional industries and the like. The peace that you seem to talk about was, i am afraid, only limited to imperialist countries like Britain.

Judging by the sheer no of posts this site has I think I am right to expect certain level of research before people write. The reason behind Britain being the richest nation then was not it being a free open economy ( i will come to counter that soon) but because it was an imperialist nation. Only a fool can believe that it was otherwise. Do not take my word for it, open any history book – before you say facts are distorted I suggest you pick a neutral author – and the scale of the loot will be evident. I can go into the details of the impact of imperialism in making “England the richest nation” at that time but I guess it would not be fit to do that here.

Coming to the myth of England being a free, open economy then. Again, the evidence of zero research is glaring. Kindly go back to the history books and read up about the rise of the Industrial Revolution and how protectionist measures were adopted by the govt of England to help the rise of the nascent manufacturing industries at home. Even these did not prove to be enough and only when English govt combined these policies with massive suppression of market competitors arising out of traditionally industrialized countries like India(cotton textiles classic case in point) and obtained raw materials at much below market rates (through imperialist capitalist force of course) could the English goods manage to sell ( sometimes colonized people were forced to buy these – again check any historical account).

In this age of explosion of information and push button publishing there are a many millions who will write any kind of balderdash without any factual correctness based on subjective leanings. In the true spirit of Objectivity that Ayn Rand( i understand that that is where you lean) stands for, kindly do not add to those millions.

We all know for a fact that it is pure capitalistic, selfish ideas that promote poverty. Exploitation of ordinary men by the powerful is the cause of poverty all over the world and the reason behind it is free market. Any economy without socialistic ideals will turn out to be anti-poor because they would never be given the oppurtunity by the cynical high class to eliminate their own poverty. Capitalism in its pure state is just blood sucking by the rich. 

I can see where this article is coming from. It does not matter to the writer whether the farmers are suffering or living well. What seems to matter more is the idea of infiltratiing pure capitalistism into the mind of the readers. I can also see that this write up comes from the hands belonging to the rich class which is always against an egalitarian society, which aims only at its own welfare and not the society’s. 

The laudable contribution of P. Sainath in bringing out the miseries of poor farmers deserves the highest honour and gratitude. It is only natural that the super-rich, who cannot stand the development and welfare of the poor, criticize and try to malign the contributions of such stupendous socialists who have dedicated their lives to fight the economic tyrany of a particular class of people.