But thanks everyone first for posting this, and secondly for sharing your thoughts. very fascinating (educational)

A modern society is the sum of all the advancements (and occasional steps backwards) through history, not just inventions from the so-called industrialized countries. Any claim to write off the value of any other society, ancient or present, would be ethnocentric and arrogant.

If our forefathers had not figured out that heating rocks in the fire and throwing them into a hole to heat up a mixture of crushed grain and water would create a bread, then we would not have an automatic bread-maker where you drop in the ingredients and out comes a bread a couple of hours later. If our forefathers had not figured out how to mix nitrate, charcoal, and sulphur which would produce fireworks for celebrations, then we would not have cluster bombs or land mines that can ensure that the killing of civilians continue long after an armed conflict is over.

Some technological advancement does not really seem like advancement if one looks a little closer. But it is a fact, that a lot of the things you take for granted every day are the products of technologies that were only made possible because our forefathers were wise enough to share their knowledge with others. I doubt you can find any product that could have been produced and brought to you without ingredients, components, or machines based on technology and knowledge developed in another country or part of the world.

That said, I admit that present day Muslim countries are not exactly at the forefront technologically, but it is not because they are lesser people than you and me or because they are incapable. I suspect that a reason could possibly be that they spend so much of their time on a religion that has remained static for about a millennium; because that has made them complacent in all other parts of life as well. What I think it comes down to is that their stubborn belief in that everything starts and end with their religion has resulted in that they have lost their natural curiosity and therefore the ability to question everything around them. The main driver behind innovation and development is questioning status quo - no questions, no progress!

Judging from your argumentation, I have probably read a whole lot more about economics than you have. This is the part of my post where I accuse you of complacency, because before I looked beyond what was written in the books I was presented with by the ‘education system’ I could have made the same comments about economy as you do. I hyphenate ‘education system’, because selective conditioning or indoctrination to promote pseudo-capitalism would be much more fitting.

If you had taken an interest in the works of economists and political thinkers like Chydenius, Hayek, von Mises, and Rothbard instead of just the abstracts of Keynes’ and Smith’s models used in the ‘modern’ economy books you refer to, then you would know about the caveats, limitations, and forewarnings that should accompany the economic models that pseudo-capitalists have implemented in our societies.

Some of the important factors that have ‘disappeared’ from ‘modern’ economy books are for example:

-that Capitalism is an ideology which goes beyond the economic principles presented as free market economics (the word capitalism was originally used derogatory by Communists - the proponents of radically different economic models).
-that free market economic models have no social conscience, so they will only provide the foundation for a just and democratic society if they are supplemented with ethical philosophies about liberty and personal rights. The models can explain the dynamics of a free market, but they cannot guarantee that the market remain free from corruption.
-that both supporters and opponents of free market economics warned that Keynes’ interpretation of the models would be likely to result in a feudal society with a political system close to oligarchy. If you open your eyes, then you would realize that they were right!
-that monopoly and oligopoly situations in a supply and demand driven economy is ONLY possible through manipulation of the market mechanisms (corruption, subsidies and preferential legislation).
-that economic equality (equal distribution of wealth) is impossible and that there will always be a natural imbalance in the distribution of wealth. Pareto’s “Pareto Principle” and “Law of the Vital Few”, “Zipf’s Law” about probability distributions, and “Chaos Theory” about non-linear dynamics have proven this, but also that great inequality (e.g. 5% of the population owning 80% of the wealth) is just as unnatural, however possible through manipulation of the market.

If you had also followed up on more recent economic developments you would be aware of:

-that several of Keynes’ theories have been proven flawed and incorrect by practice, but that very few theories have been corrected in ‘modern’ economy books and in policies by governments in most industrialized countries (e.g. stagflation was not anticipated until it popped up in the early 70s).
-that there is proof of that economic policies to ‘heat’ or ‘cool’ the national economy is more like pissing in your pants to keep warm than having lasting effects. In other words, a complete waste of money.
-that Adam Smith’s principle about benefits of trade between nations only brings the ‘promised’ benefits when both nations have a comparable standard of living, but that it leads to rent seeking and has devastating effects on both nations if there is a considerable gap between the standard of living in the two nations.
-that ownership by proxy (stock trade) promotes short-term rent seeking rather than a long-term focus on sustainable profitability of a company. Most privately owned companies perform better because their owners are willing to accept long-term investments while publicly traded companies focus more on short-term investments to meet the short-term dividend demands by investors (that is the reason why a large company can present record profits one day and then fire 2,000 employees the day after).

I know that there is justification for intellectual property rights to some degree (in industrialized countries), but please let me know exactly how the world will advance with proliferation of strict intellectual property laws!

Are you talking about the hundreds of thousands that are dying of AIDS in Africa because multinational pharmaceutical companies prohibit that they produce generic copy drugs in order to be able to afford the supply for the sick people?

Strictly following the laws (written in cooperation with the pharmaceutical companies to begin with) the pharmaceutical companies are right, but does it advance the world that African nations are prevented from producing the drugs that people need when the only alternative is that they are forced to buy an insignificant amount of expensive drugs and therefore can only supply a fraction of their patients while the rest are doomed to die -just to blindly uphold pseudo-capitalism that was supposed to provide prosperity to everybody?!?

Here is what Noam Chomsky said when he was asked whether he thinks a fair society would be possible under capitalism:

Chomsky: “Ghandi was once asked what he thought about Western civilization. His answer was that maybe it would be a good idea. And you can say the same about capitalism. Maybe it would be a good idea; we have never had anything remotely resembling it.”

I am preparing my argumentation for you, but it is getting late, so I will get back to you in a couple of days when I have the time to give you a reply.