18a846de   
   XPost: soc.culture.baltics, soc.culture.czecho-slovak, soc.culture.russian   
   XPost: soc.culture.nordic, soc.culture.baltics   
   From: ddfr@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com   
      
   In article ,   
    holman@mappi.helsinki.fi (Eugene Holman) wrote:   
      
   > I, for one, am yet to be convinced that   
   > economic globalization on the scale that it is now is the best way to run   
   > the world economy. Nor are its loudest proponents, since virtually all   
   > countries, specifically those that most vociferously push globalization,   
   > protect certain sectors of their economies by subsidies and tariffs.   
      
   There is a buried assumption here--that government policy reflects what   
   the people making it believe is the best way to run the world economy.   
   It doesn't--it reflects what political actors believe to be in their   
   political interest. For reasons familiar in public choice theory, it is   
   often politically profitable to do things that benefit concentrated   
   interests at the expense of dispersed interests, even if the net effect   
   is to make the country in question worse off. Tariffs are more or less   
   the textbook example.   
      
   So the existence of U.S. tariffs not only doesn't show that American   
   legislators think such tariffs are in the interest of the world economy,   
   it doesn't even show that they think such tariffs are in the interest of   
   the U.S. economy--and they aren't, as almost any competent economist   
   could tell you.   
      
   I conjecture from the rest of your post that you believe that something   
   along the general lines of the Soviet model is in fact a better answer   
   than the market, but either it was implemented badly or destroyed by the   
   evil capitalists. I doubt it's worth my trying to persuade you that your   
   view is baseless, but perhaps I could get a socialist economist to do so.   
      
   During the 1920's there was a controversy between economists who   
   supported socialism and economists who opposed it, referred to as the   
   "calculation controversy." Two leading figures on the socialist side   
   were Oskar Lange and Abba Lerner. They eventually concluded that the   
   centrally planned model was indeed unworkable, and so attempted to   
   design some sort of market socialism, a system where firm managers were   
   instructed to act as if they were profit maximizing capitalists and the   
   general structure of the economy set up on market lines.   
      
   It was a valiant effort, although I don't think it worked. But I expect   
   that if you look at some of their work, you should at least discover   
   that smart socialist economists had concluded that anything along the   
   lines of the Soviet model was unworkable, and perhaps even why.   
      
   --   
    http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/   
    Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.   
    Published by Baen, in bookstores now   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)