Comments on Read and Don't Weep

Export oriented industrialization seems to work much more consistently then Import substitution industrialization or neo-liberal routes.

Japan, South Korea et al. seem much better than Chile or Mexico

What the fuck are you saying here? One economist argues that developing nations would be better off if their governments pursued protectionist trade policies in the short run, thus capitalism "is a myth without a rational kernel"?

I mean, seriously, what the fuck? Do you even understand what you're trying to say?

chalk up yet another thing capitalism can't produce...

@2, do you even know what neoliberalism is about? its basic idea?

The myth of "Free Trade" is not a capitalist myth.

It's a neocon myth.

True capitalism has always - from it's origins in Scotland - been about Fair Trade.

Sadly, the elitist Royalists who ruin this country believe in Free Trade, not Fair Trade. Which is why I like to call them Red Bushies, and point out they are NOT capitalists.

African countries that told the IMF to go fuck itself are doing better than African countries that adopted SAPs.

@2,

SAPs (structural adjustment programs) are about a lot more than instituting free trade. They also demand that governments cut their spending in social services.

the thing that sucks about the united states government dictating anything to another nation about free trade is that we don't honestly have free trade to begin with.

our government subsidizes our agricultural industry to the point that other nations can't compete, even though farming would be a viable source of income if they didn't have to compete. we dump so much excess supply created by subsidies on poor nations that there really little they can do in the world labor force with the lack of skills they have.

the problem with the free market is when governments and people use it as a platitude but then just keep their protectionist handouts in place. maybe you should complain about american protectionism first charles, before you say the answer is for african nations to become more protectionist.

the IMF is a NGO that sucks ass completely. I'm about as free market as they come and I think they are a crooked, usurious bunch of assholes.

and charles doesnt know what free markets are. he is beating a strawman here. no economist says that the free market just developed overnight on it's own. no nation is truly capitalist, only varying shades of capitalist.

and any of the "capitalism doesnt work at promoting economic growth" shit is hilarious. there are many counter examples where it does promote economic growth, even on a minute levels (such as micro loans.) There are also examples where opening up the markets and moving away from centralized control of production has increased productivity such as China. cherry picking nations that have been dicked over by the west doesnt mean capitalism is wrong, it means the west is wrong for being dicks.

Charles, for balance you might try reading a href="http://users.ox.ac.uk/~econpco/">Paul Collier's "The Bottom Billion."

I thought capitalism was about usury.

That's the kernel of the entire system.
The very engine of capitalism.

And I thought usury was a sin.

religion is a poor metric to evaluate different means of transaction.

from wikipedia:
"economic and social system in which the means of production are predominantly privately[1][2] owned and operated, and in which investments, distribution, income, production and pricing of goods and services are determined through the operation of a market economy. It is usually considered to involve the right of individuals and groups of individuals acting as "legal persons" or corporations to trade capital goods, labor, land and money (see finance and credit).

Capitalist economic practices became institutionalized in Europe between the 16th and 19th centuries, although some features of capitalist organization existed in the ancient world, and early forms of merchant capitalism flourished during the Middle Ages.[3][4] Capitalism has been dominant in the Western world since the end of feudalism,[5] It gradually spread from Europe, particularly from Britain, across political and cultural frontiers. In the 19th and 20th centuries, capitalism provided the main, but not exclusive, means of industrialization throughout much of the world.[6]

The concept of capitalism has limited analytic value, given the great variety of historical cases over which it is applied, varying in time, geography, politics and culture, and some feel that the term "mixed economies" more precisely describes most contemporary economies.[7][8] Some economists have specified a variety of different types of capitalism, depending on specifics of concentration of economic power and wealth, and methods of capital accumulation.[6] During the last century capitalism has been contrasted with centrally planned economies"

i'm sure we can all find faults in the market economy, but there are few places where centrally control of the economy yields better results without losing more in the process.

Don't like the religious angle?
Hm. Ok.

How about this: The kernel of capitalism is based on the creation of debt for which there can be no possible repayment except at the expense of another's resources (livlihood, etc.).

yo, bellevue @11:
"there are few places where centrally control of the economy yields better results without losing more in the process."

so then it sounds like peoples' differing interpretation and definition of what are actually better results is what is at issue here.
economic growth in and of itself, or a broader definition?
Quality of life, and issues like that, are not always quantifiable in only monetary or first world terms, nor should they be, because that would be shortsighted and ethnocentric.

treacle, why does debt work at raising the quality of life of people? if you say no then there is no hope for you. do micro loans work?

@13
this the exact problem in economics. what is equitable? what is fair? is it fair to take from one to give to another? there are upsides and downsides but all i am seeing here is "capitalism has failed to do any good in the world and provide new ideas."

the other problem is exactly what you said; ethnocentricism. what is good for sweden might not be good for the United States (and actually there was a story a while back about how swedens center of right party cut taxes and some benefits to poorer people and many people are outraged) and what works here might not work in Africa.

but I have to put forth the proposition; we can't continue to send aid to africa if;

a. we think we should then control their decision making with that money
b. we want them to be a fence for our goods

all aid and help to africa should be NSA. If bad things happen with that aid then so be it. I know many of you want Africa to just tell the united states to buzz off but then when something bad happens like rwanda you want the USA and U.N to go in and rectify it.

the problem i have with the free market bashing is that people who bash it here have never truly experienced the flip side of a centrally controlled economy and ignore examples where they have failed.

on a tangential note , people who naysay the free market and support government solutions to problems are just cherry picking government solutions they like and ignoring ones that they don't. are illegal drugs an example of good government intervention? and who controls what the government intervenes in on? for all the naysaying of market economics, they at least can voice their wants and needs with their dollar, instead of being dictated what their need and allotment is by a bureaucrat.

also, another problem here is people will bash the IMF for usury but they were supplying the demand for cash that africa wanted. why havent the bastions of socialist democracy given more to africa? is it because it takes many resources to produce tranquility at home that there is none left over for the world?

"a. we think we should then control their decision making with that money
b. we want them to be a fence for our goods

good ideas there. and our aid policy is often tied far too closely to American economic interests, much of that is due to long standing colonial imperative, and protectorate traditions that are sold as sloganeering Noblesse Oblige.

but this part, you say:
the problem i have with the free market bashing is that people who bash it here have never truly experienced the flip side of a centrally controlled economy and ignore examples where they have failed.

my problem is more that there is some implication that the "free market" is morally/ethically superior, and people point to the collapse of heavily centralized govts as proof. I'd say of the two, the "free market" is on a much more questionable ground; from a humanist perspective.

and also on a tangential note. there seems to be plenty of examples of both good and bed regulatory/aid agencies.

in the good column i'd put things like the SEC, anti-trust, OSHA etc.

on the other side the FDA seems only to serve big Pharma, and what the hell is up with tying foreign aid to our Judeo-Christian notions about family planning?

@16

free market is superior for the goals of creating efficiency in the market between supply and demand. often times this might be at odds with the idea of fairness and equality. i dont think it is morally or ethically superior. but thats because i view systems of transferring goods and services as inherently amoral.

the problem with central control of economies is the means necessary to enforce and prop up centrally planned economies and the reality of such a central board making decisions that you disagree with. for instance, with universal health care, will we really be better off if an administrator can deny you something that you think you need (like pain medication for fibromyalgia) when the entire system was set up to prevent people from denying treatment?

#17:
I take it you mean amoral, as in value neutral, neither right nor worng, "just is" kind of thing? I guess I can see where your coming from on that, sort of, in an idealized sanitized view of reality kind of way. Yes they are just systems, and there are positives and negatives that need to be weighed, but the best that can be hoped for in that case is a wash... like that the good and bad cancel each other out. ahhh, were it were so.

But how about industries that have a demonstrable long(and sometimes short)term negative effect on humanity? like say weapons manufacturing, tobacco, oil, coal, beef, timber extraction(to an extent) and lets say leach mining. Is getting those "goods and services"(at a tidy profit mind you)to market amoral, when you add environmental and human costs into the equation?

My apologies for a long post.

treacle, [...] does debt work at raising the quality of life of people?
if you say no then there is no hope for you. do micro loans work?

which people? Yes, within the system we have people can take loans & microloans and good things can happen. Quality of life can be raised. No question. But still the essential mechanism that requires abuse remains in place.

Microloans are great. Fantastic even. But capitalist demands to produce profit encouraged people to abuse others, via slavery, stealing resources, etc. in the past. This is part of the historical reason that Africa and West Asia need microloans today. Yes yes, there is the "Guns Germs & Steel" argument regarding who managed to obtain a stable food source and better weapons first, and that's all part of it-- cannot be ignored. But another part is that the Europeans, with their loan-based expeditioneering, took inhuman advantage of other peoples resulting in the dynamics we face today.

ethnocentricism.

Right. Historical, etc. Capitalism isn't "the cause", per se, but it is a contributing factor (I believe) for why people were willing to take advantage of the 'global south'.

the problem i have with the free market bashing is that people who bash it here have never truly experienced the flip side of a centrally controlled economy

A truly fair point. I don't believe I'm bashing the free market. Both free markets and central-planning have their faults -- and benefits, no question. My main argument is that the mechanism of the money system we have today is inherently abusive, and will always -- always -- result in someone losing out. Not losing out, but being robbed.

America/Europe/First&Second World are largely the way they are -- affluent, opportunity, quality of life -- because our ancestors essentially stole value from other people who couldn't defend themselves against our weapons.

Today, now that pure force is harder to press against those with less power (thanks to increased communications -- yes, thank you DARPA) economic weapons are moved in. Neoliberalist attacks on weaker economies do what? Study them, you may see that they rape them of value. High interest rates, fire-sale prices on previously state-owned industries, lay-offs, currency speculation. Abuse. Against the weaker ones once again.

Whether that is "free market" or some other term is irrelevant to me. The fact remains that the equation that is the tiny engine: [(money + interest) = more money] (from where exactly?), has resulted in the IMF, World Bank, WTO and other agencies willing to do the bidding of those with capital power against those without.

This is anti-human and will always remain so.
Regardless of your "dollar = vote" arguments, or "efficiency" arguments, or your "quality of life" arguments.

people who naysay the free market and support government solutions

This "them vs. us" P.o.V. swims in the water of our current money system. Many many, probably nearly everyone has only experienced only one type of money design, and this argument falls inside that. There are other designs for exchanging value and wealth that are far more equitable than the current arrangement. Answers to our problems cannot occur inside the money system as we currently know it, but with multiple channels of exchanging value with one another, most of which should not be exploitative.

bash the IMF for usury but they were supplying the demand for cash that africa wanted. why havent the bastions of socialist democracy given more to africa?

This too lives inside the usurious monetary system. Socialist democracies are all well and good, and actually do seem to create better qualities of life than nearly unbridled capitalism (France, Germany, Japan and other have GREAT health care, while we have limited, expensive health care.) Regarding their giving to Africa? They are bound by the dynamics of usury-based money.

Like CEO's who would love to do "better" things, but find themselves forced to lay-off hundreds to boost their stock price, the "market" forces inhuman decisions... because of that tiny equation.

free market is superior for the goals of creating efficiency in the market between supply and demand.

Yay for efficiency. What are our goals as humans? Justice? Violence? Ecological sanity? Full bellies? Idle pleasures? Sugar? Basic health and education for all? Why don't we redesign our money system to flow naturally toward humanistic goals, instead of massive wealth and power consolidation?

Also, the argument of "supply and demand" completely ignores the power of communication and propaganda in creating demand for useless plastic things. Not that commercialist propaganda is solely responsible for the massive desire for distraction prevelant today, but it is a serious factor.

We want "political democracy" ... why don't we also work for "economic democracy" ??

I highly recommend The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein which goes into great detail about Friedmanism and the role this kind of economic policy continues to play in terrible human rights conditions (starting in the 60s with the southern cone of South America, and later moving into other parts of the world, including Iraq today.)