“All the populations made destitute”?!? Is a subsistence farmer being forced to take care of their parents in poverty barely able to feed each other really some terrible “retirement system” to abolish? You really think feudal systems had some kind of positive connotation? I think those people just worked until death and didn’t really get much out of it.
This article kinda misses the huge reduction in subsistence poverty that has happened, and a host of other gigantic benefits that humanity has accrued over the last 200 or so years.
I totally agree about the WEF shenanigans, but it is because they are out of touch people who think they can plan society for the benefit of the unwashed masses.
The issue here isn’t the fundamental tools of classical economic analysis, it is the folly of social and economic planners trying to apply their morality on everyone else.
a) Isn’t there some responsibility for leaders to know and make informed decisions on behalf of their country, rather than placing all the blame at the door of western “advisors”? This is obvious in Sri Lanka where trying to adopt organic farming overnight and banning all chemical fertilizer at once was obviously preposterous. Arguably, Yeltsin and his own staff should have taken the west’s extreme privatization prescriptions with a grain of salt.
b) Shouldn’t we distinguish between market regulations and social safety nets, versus wasteful subsidies of energy and food that would be less-expensively provided as direct assistance to the poor. That is what the IMF advocates, not dismantling the welfare state.
c) You seem to be blaming capitalists for the overbearing climate regulations imposed by bumbling left-center governments. I’m pretty sure there is a wide variety of both possible and suggested solutions to reduce emissions without draconian regulations. These are policy mistakes, not harbingers of evil.
I agree with several of your points, including the negative effects of "shock therapy" in some countries. However, as with Rationalista, I think you understate the overall decline in global poverty during a period of economic liberalism (or neoliberalism if you will). See, for example: https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
Leighton, this one so knocked me out that I felt compelled to take the audacious step of printing the thing out. On real paper. Made from trees. Not a fashionable thing to do, but this one, I have to study and maybe even annotate. With a pen. And ink. Marks on paper. It's a thing. This angle of capitalism as a system elites foisted on non-elites is just upending my world. Holy f, the antiracists are right after all! (Uh...irony, if not obvious.)
It strikes me as very post-modern to imagine that the free market is a product of violence and coercion. I think most free market advocates, myself included, would argue that the use of violence and coercion is the opposite of a free market. I think the single best work that highlights this contrast is Rothbard's Power and Market. You mention Smith and Ricardo as if their ideas laid a solid foundation for real economics. Their failure to appreciate the subjective nature of value instead laid the foundation for the labor theory of value of Marx. Is it accurate or useful to categorize an economic legacy terminating in Marxism as "free market"? I don't think it is. If you want to understand a useful conception of "real" free market economics, you must become familiar with the work of the Austrians, especially Mises and Rothbard. Mises was at a "free market" symposium that included the likes of a young Milton Friedman. He rightfully identified Friedman and his associates as the socialists that they were with their affinity for using central banking to manipulate interest rates. Manipulating interest rates with a central bank is just about the most aggressive way to violate market principles as it violates the property rights of every individual with savings in the manipulated currency. The Austrian Business Cycle Theory has much better explanatory power than this retrospectively constructed narrative that free markets are the source of society's ills. In this case, I think the premise that the "free market" requires the initiation of violence and coercion is the source of some great confusion that would be instantly resolved by familiarity with the heterodox Austrian school of economics.
“All the populations made destitute”?!? Is a subsistence farmer being forced to take care of their parents in poverty barely able to feed each other really some terrible “retirement system” to abolish? You really think feudal systems had some kind of positive connotation? I think those people just worked until death and didn’t really get much out of it.
This article kinda misses the huge reduction in subsistence poverty that has happened, and a host of other gigantic benefits that humanity has accrued over the last 200 or so years.
I totally agree about the WEF shenanigans, but it is because they are out of touch people who think they can plan society for the benefit of the unwashed masses.
The issue here isn’t the fundamental tools of classical economic analysis, it is the folly of social and economic planners trying to apply their morality on everyone else.
a) Isn’t there some responsibility for leaders to know and make informed decisions on behalf of their country, rather than placing all the blame at the door of western “advisors”? This is obvious in Sri Lanka where trying to adopt organic farming overnight and banning all chemical fertilizer at once was obviously preposterous. Arguably, Yeltsin and his own staff should have taken the west’s extreme privatization prescriptions with a grain of salt.
b) Shouldn’t we distinguish between market regulations and social safety nets, versus wasteful subsidies of energy and food that would be less-expensively provided as direct assistance to the poor. That is what the IMF advocates, not dismantling the welfare state.
c) You seem to be blaming capitalists for the overbearing climate regulations imposed by bumbling left-center governments. I’m pretty sure there is a wide variety of both possible and suggested solutions to reduce emissions without draconian regulations. These are policy mistakes, not harbingers of evil.
I agree with several of your points, including the negative effects of "shock therapy" in some countries. However, as with Rationalista, I think you understate the overall decline in global poverty during a period of economic liberalism (or neoliberalism if you will). See, for example: https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
Leighton, this one so knocked me out that I felt compelled to take the audacious step of printing the thing out. On real paper. Made from trees. Not a fashionable thing to do, but this one, I have to study and maybe even annotate. With a pen. And ink. Marks on paper. It's a thing. This angle of capitalism as a system elites foisted on non-elites is just upending my world. Holy f, the antiracists are right after all! (Uh...irony, if not obvious.)
I'm very late reading this article, but I wanted to thank you for another great piece.
It strikes me as very post-modern to imagine that the free market is a product of violence and coercion. I think most free market advocates, myself included, would argue that the use of violence and coercion is the opposite of a free market. I think the single best work that highlights this contrast is Rothbard's Power and Market. You mention Smith and Ricardo as if their ideas laid a solid foundation for real economics. Their failure to appreciate the subjective nature of value instead laid the foundation for the labor theory of value of Marx. Is it accurate or useful to categorize an economic legacy terminating in Marxism as "free market"? I don't think it is. If you want to understand a useful conception of "real" free market economics, you must become familiar with the work of the Austrians, especially Mises and Rothbard. Mises was at a "free market" symposium that included the likes of a young Milton Friedman. He rightfully identified Friedman and his associates as the socialists that they were with their affinity for using central banking to manipulate interest rates. Manipulating interest rates with a central bank is just about the most aggressive way to violate market principles as it violates the property rights of every individual with savings in the manipulated currency. The Austrian Business Cycle Theory has much better explanatory power than this retrospectively constructed narrative that free markets are the source of society's ills. In this case, I think the premise that the "free market" requires the initiation of violence and coercion is the source of some great confusion that would be instantly resolved by familiarity with the heterodox Austrian school of economics.
Hmmmm. I just finished the abridged version of Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago”. Russian Gangster Oligarchs are not a creation of the IMF.
Among other things!