[lbo-talk] US not a private enterprise system

[Somebody Somebody]

Yeah, global literacy rates right after World War II were just over 50% globally. Now, 84% of the world's population is literate according to UNESCO. It's difficult to underestimate how much the globe has changed since the bad old days of European colonialism. 

Incidentally, Afghanistan, a land of considerable antiquity, has a pathetically low literacy rate of 28%! There is simply no comparably backward country in all of Eurasia. Although we flatter the Afghans by calling their country the graveyard of empires, there could hardly be a land more suited for old fashioned colonialism than this one. Of course, no surprise, the U.S. is doing practically nothing to bring the country into modernity.