An alleged Bill Gates’ quote: “Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.”
In the post-communist Czech Republic, this point is quite often made by furious anti-communists. “Do you like communism? Then move to North Korea or Cuba!”
Such a statement is, however, horribly flawed. Of course, nobody would want to live in the Stalinist era of the 1930s or nowadays North Korea. And yes, these are undoubtedly communist countries.
But real socialism (there was never communism) had a lot of shapes. In Czechoslovakia, there were the 1950’s where repressions were enormous. But let’s compare it with the 1980s. Of course, no freedom of speech, election was a farce. But torture wasn’t prevalent so much as in the above-mentioned 1950s. New elements of capitalism were introduced. People had a decent steady income and there was no unemployment. The vulnerable part of society was taken care of.
As an anti-communist and proponent of regulated capitalism, I would make Bill Gates’s quote inversely.
“Don’t like communism? Then move to Afghanistan, Burundi, Somalia, Liberia, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” What kind of economic system do these countries have? Of course, capitalism.
But we cannot slide to Bill Gates’ bias because capitalism is also in Switzerland, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, and many others.
We must always remember what kind of era we are talking about and not slide to such primitive conclusions.
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