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Larry, San Francisco's avatar

South Korea was th a poor part of the Korean peninsula and suffered harsh treatment under the Japanese colonists in the 1st half of the 20th century. It was then utterly destroyed during the Korean War. 2 generations later it was one of the richest countries in the world.

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David Wyman's avatar

(Typo in P7, "so" instead of "sow.")

This has a good deal of Thomas Sowell's Conquests and Cultures in it. Noam Chomsky once tried to claim in a college debate that economic improvement was not a moral good in itself because standard of living had gone up gradually for blacks in slavery, and that would mean that slavery was a good thing. He missed the point. That evidence says nothing about whether slavery is a good thing, but is powerful evidence that free markets and good institutions are a good thing. Even when people are completely callous about your well-being or even hostile to your interests, if you live in a free market, your lot improves.

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