And the Last One Got a Whack on the Tail

I remember as a very young child reading a book about a bunch of ducks. They were cared for by a human who let them swim in a pond. Every evening, they'd all hurry to enter the duck house on the pond. They hurried, because the last one in got a whack on the tail as xe went in.
This really bothered me as a child, because no matter what the ducks did, one would always get hit. There was always a loser. I wondered why the ducks would bother getting faster since one would always get hit regardless of how fast they were. Of course, the individual duck might benefit, but only at the expense of some other duck.
A capitalist economy is kind of like that. I hear people talking about 'make poverty history' but none of them seem to get that poverty is built into capitalism. In order to 'make poverty history', they'd have to fundamentally change our economy.
There is a name for the kind of change they'd have to make. It's a name that for many people has negative connotations - communism. Now, not all the parts of Karl Marx's idea need to be used, but if you're serious about making poverty history, one part of communism is essential. That part is 'to each according to their need, from each according to their ability'. That's the only way to 'make poverty history'.

politics