POL Politiek
Discussies en diepgaande gesprekken over de politiek in de breedste zin van het woord kun je hier voeren.
Ik heb aan de dinertafel laten vallen dat ik denk dat Milton Friedman wel goede ideeën had.
Prompt kreeg ik het verwijt dat ik een voorstander ben van Pinochet. Friedman was namelijk helemaal niet zo'n beste kerel zo schijnt in de linkse mythologie:
Zover ik weet hadden enkele Chileense studenten les gekregen van Friedman, en hebben zijn ideeën meegenomen naar Chilli om vervolgens het land te hervormen.
Verzoek aan de fokkers: Onderwijs mij in de wandaden van de "Chicago Boys".
Prompt kreeg ik het verwijt dat ik een voorstander ben van Pinochet. Friedman was namelijk helemaal niet zo'n beste kerel zo schijnt in de linkse mythologie:
Zover ik weet hadden enkele Chileense studenten les gekregen van Friedman, en hebben zijn ideeën meegenomen naar Chilli om vervolgens het land te hervormen.
Verzoek aan de fokkers: Onderwijs mij in de wandaden van de "Chicago Boys".
[ Bericht 100% gewijzigd door Metalfrost op 28-03-2010 04:40:02 (baggerantwoord van een baggeruser) ]
Google is your friend, abuse your friends
Gatverdamme, dat je je eten naar binnen kunt krijgen aan zo'n linkse tafel. 
Ik ben overigens ook benieuwd, in economen kringen hoor je vrijwel nooit een kwaad woord over Friedman.
Ik ben overigens ook benieuwd, in economen kringen hoor je vrijwel nooit een kwaad woord over Friedman.
-weg-
[ Bericht 50% gewijzigd door remlof op 28-03-2010 04:43:04 ]
[ Bericht 50% gewijzigd door remlof op 28-03-2010 04:43:04 ]
mondhoekjens zijn soms net bilspleetjens.
The Shock Doctrine
In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.
At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.
Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.
The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas through our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
---
Daar gaat het boek over. Een "schok" gebruiken, exploiteren voor een overname door de uber-corporaties en de moderne robber barons. Social engineering dmv trauma.
Naomi Klein beschrijft het patroon dat in veel gebeurtenissen hetzelfde was. Ze is nauwelijks de enige daarin. Een soort "orde uit chaos" model dat steeds word toegepast.
Wat dit met Friedman te maken heeft is voor mij een vraag. Behalve dan dat dit bank/corporatie kartel systeem haaks op Friedmans ideeën staat.
In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.
At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.
Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.
The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas through our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
---
Daar gaat het boek over. Een "schok" gebruiken, exploiteren voor een overname door de uber-corporaties en de moderne robber barons. Social engineering dmv trauma.
Naomi Klein beschrijft het patroon dat in veel gebeurtenissen hetzelfde was. Ze is nauwelijks de enige daarin. Een soort "orde uit chaos" model dat steeds word toegepast.
Wat dit met Friedman te maken heeft is voor mij een vraag. Behalve dan dat dit bank/corporatie kartel systeem haaks op Friedmans ideeën staat.
Tja het is eigenlijk een beetje alsof je een Hitler van economisch advies gaat voorzien en er dan ook nog van geniet wanneer je in zo'n laboratorium aan de gang kunt met je ideeen. Toppers die Chicago Boys.quote:Op zondag 28 maart 2010 04:35 schreef Illiberal het volgende:
Ik heb aan de dinertafel laten vallen dat ik denk dat Milton Friedman wel goede ideeën had.
Prompt kreeg ik het verwijt dat ik een voorstander ben van Pinochet. Friedman was namelijk helemaal niet zo'n beste kerel zo schijnt in de linkse mythologie:
[ afbeelding ]
Zover ik weet hadden enkele Chileense studenten les gekregen van Friedman, en hebben zijn ideeën meegenomen naar Chilli om vervolgens het land te hervormen.
Verzoek aan de fokkers: Onderwijs mij in de wandaden van de "Chicago Boys".
http://www.mrwonkish.nl Eurocrisis, Documentaires, Economie
Friedman's eigen kijk op de zaak:quote:Op zondag 28 maart 2010 09:48 schreef dramatiek het volgende:
[..]
Tja het is eigenlijk een beetje alsof je een Hitler van economisch advies gaat voorzien en er dan ook nog van geniet wanneer je in zo'n laboratorium aan de gang kunt met je ideeen. Toppers die Chicago Boys.
"Chilean economy did very well, but more important, in the end the central government, the military junta, was replaced by a democratic society. So the really important thing about the Chilean business is that free markets did work their way in bringing about a free society."
bron
Friedman gelooft dat hij de wegbereider is geweest van een vrijere maatschappij.
en dat resulteeerde in het volgende.(zie onder) Ik vraag me ook af of Friedman hetzelfde dacht (wat betreft marktwerking in het schoolsysteem) toen Katrina in Amerika voorbij kwam. Idiote fundamentalists is het. Lijkenpikkers. Je kan het ook overdrijven. Wat dat betreft ben ik blijer met de VVD in NL.quote:Op zondag 28 maart 2010 09:55 schreef Ribbenburg het volgende:
[..]
Friedman's eigen kijk op de zaak:
"Chilean economy did very well, but more important, in the end the central government, the military junta, was replaced by a democratic society. So the really important thing about the Chilean business is that free markets did work their way in bringing about a free society."
bron
Friedman gelooft dat hij de wegbereider is geweest van een vrijere maatschappij.
After the coup and the death of Allende, Pinochet and his Chicago Boys did their best to dismantle Chile's public sphere, auctioning off state enterprises and slashing financial and trade regulations. Enormous wealth was created in this period but at a terrible cost: by the early 80s, Pinochet's Friedman-prescribed policies had caused rapid de-industrialisation, a tenfold increase in unemployment and an explosion of distinctly unstable shantytowns. They also led to a crisis of corruption and debt so severe that, in 1982, Pinochet was forced to fire his key Chicago Boy advisers and nationalise several of the large deregulated financial institutions. (Sound familiar?)
[ Bericht 2% gewijzigd door dramatiek op 28-03-2010 10:38:11 ]
http://www.mrwonkish.nl Eurocrisis, Documentaires, Economie
Four sources of ‘de-industrialisation and a new concept of the ‘Dutch disease’
Paragraaf 2.2 is interessant in deze context.
Paragraaf 2.2 is interessant in deze context.
quote:2.2 The second source of ‘de-industrialisation’: a declining relationship between income per capita and manufacturing employment
[...]
This continuous decline over time in the relationship between manufacturing
employment and income per capita is the second source of de-industrialisation
identified in this work. In essence, for middle- and high-income countries, whether or
not they had reached the turning point of the regression, there was a declining level of
manufacturing employment associated with each level of income per capita. The
reasons for this steady decline, in particular the big drop during the 1980s for
industrialised countries, still need to be properly understood. Evidence so far
indicates that it is the result of a combination of factors, including, at least in part,
three of the hypotheses mentioned above: the ‘statistical illusion’ hypothesis; (in an
indirect way) the propagation of the new technological paradigm (micro-electronics);
and the increasingly important process of breaking-down of the ‘value chain’ by multiproduct
Transnational Corporations (TNCs), leading to the relocation to DCs of the
labour-intensive assembly-end part of the value chain. However, at least of equal
(possibly of more) importance are the consequences of the new politics and
economics of the 1980s – especially the sharp slowdown of economic growth that
followed those policies – and the massive institutional and financial transformations
that characterised the world economy in this period.
Although a detailed analysis of the role that each of these factors played in deindustrialisation during this period is outside the scope of this paper, it is important at
least to emphasise that the existing literature does not pay sufficient attention to the
latter phenomenon: the role that the 1980s’ switch in ‘policy regime’ in OECD
countries had on manufacturing employment – from post-war Keynesianism (broadly
speaking) to monetarism. As is clear from Figure 3, the combined effect that ‘neoliberal’
politics and (demand-constraining) monetarist economics had on
manufacturing employment was devastating, in particular the stagflation that followed
the (barking-up-the-wrong-tree) monetarist response to the second oil shock.
Chicago’s (repackaged) monetarist policies ‘came of age’ (again) in their new
incarnation with the Swedish Central Bank giving their economic prize in honour of
Alfred Nobel to Milton Friedman in the mid-1970s. Soon afterwards, their big break
came with the failure of the Carter administration’s attempt at stimulate aggregate
demand in the US between 1977-1978; these expansionary policies resulted in the US
trade deficits reaching one-quarter of exports just at a time when the rest of the
OECD was no longer willing to absorb ‘excess’ dollars. The resulting dollar
weakness, in tandem with rising inflation, set the stage for the FED radical monetarist
era following the appointment of Paul Volker and his trebling of interest rates
between 1979 and 1981. In turn, the election of Mrs. Thatcher in 1979 was the icing
on the cake for the new neo-liberal-cum-monetarist policies. Her election also marked
the arrival of the new policies in Europe, and the emergence of the ‘Chicago-Boys’ in
Pinochet’s Chile their (not very democratic) appearance in the Third World.
In the EU there was an immediate collapse of growth rates: during Mrs. Thatcher’s
first two years in office (1979-81), for example, the growth-rate of output in the UK
fell from 3.7% to -2.2% (in fact, output declined by no less than 17% in just 6
quarters); in Germany it dropped from 4.2% (1979) to –0.6% (1982); in France from
3.2% (1979) to 0.8% (1983); and in Italy from 6% (1979) to 0.3% (1983). This sharp
slowdown had a major impact on unemployment – in the UK, it grew from 5%
(1979) to 12.4% (1982); in Germany from 3.2% (1979) to 8% (1983); and in France
from 5.9% (1979) to 10.2% (1985).
Manufacturing was particularly badly hit by these events. In the UK, for example, net
manufacturing investment became highly negative in 1981 and 1982. The
combination of these factors – massive reductions in private consumption (this fell
from an annualised growth rate of 8.5% in the second quarter of 1979 to –3.7% in the
same quarter of the following year), high interest rates, low levels of investment and a
sharp revaluation of the pound – meant that manufacturing employment fell by 20%
in the first three years of Mrs. Thatcher’s reign alone (without experiencing any major
recovery thereafter). Therefore, there is little doubt that the remarkable decline in the
relationship between income per capita and manufacturing employment in
industrialised countries during the 1980s (clearly evident in Figure 3 above) had as
much to do with ‘policy’ as with other factors, such as the need for industrial
restructuring, technological change, mere accounting issues, or the trend towards
“financialisation”.
Naomi Klein reageerde overigens op de volgende column van Bret Stephens:
Response van Naomi Klein:quote:How Milton Friedman Saved Chile
Milton Friedman gave Chileans the intellectual wherewithal first to survive the quake, and now to build their lives anew.
Milton Friedman has been dead for more than three years. But his spirit was surely hovering protectively over Chile in the early morning hours of Saturday. Thanks largely to him, the country has endured a tragedy that elsewhere would have been an apocalypse.
Earthquake magnitudes are measured on a logarithmic scale. The earthquake that hit Northridge in 1994 measured 6.7 on the Richter scale. But its seismic-energy yield was only half that of the 7.0 quake that hit Haiti in January, which was the equivalent of 2,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs exploding all at once.
By contrast, Saturday's earthquake in Chile measured 8.8. That's nearly 500 times more powerful than Haiti's, or about one million Hiroshimas. Yet Chile's reported death toll—711 as of this writing—was a tiny fraction of the 230,000 believed to have perished in Haiti.
Chile's presidential palace survived the quake intact. Haiti's did not.
It's not by chance that Chileans were living in houses of brick—and Haitians in houses of straw—when the wolf arrived to try to blow them down. In 1973, the year the proto-Chavista government of Salvador Allende was overthrown by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Chile was an economic shambles. Inflation topped out at an annual rate of 1000%, foreign-currency reserves were totally depleted, and per capita GDP was roughly that of Peru and well below Argentina's.
What Chile did have was intellectual capital, thanks to an exchange program between its Catholic University and the economics department of the University of Chicago, then Friedman's academic home. Even before the 1973 coup, several of Chile's "Chicago Boys" had drafted a set of policy proposals which amounted to an off-the-shelf recipe for economic liberalization: sharp reductions to government spending and the money supply; privatization of state-owned companies; the elimination of obstacles to free enterprise and foreign investment, and so on.
In left-wing mythology—notably Naomi Klein's tedious 2007 screed "The Shock Doctrine"—the Chicago Boys weren't just strange bedfellows to Pinochet's dictatorship. They were complicit in its crimes. "If the pure Chicago economic theory can be carried out in Chile only at the price of repression, should its authors feel some responsibility?" wrote New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis in October 1975. In fact, Pinochet had been mostly indifferent to the Chicago Boys' advice until the continuing economic crisis forced him to look for some policy alternatives. In March 1975, he had a 45-minute meeting with Friedman and asked him to write a letter proposing some remedies. Friedman responded a month later with an eight-point proposal that largely mirrored the themes of the Chicago Boys.
For his trouble, Friedman would spend the rest of his life being defamed as an accomplice to evil: at his Nobel Prize ceremony the following year, he was met by protests and hecklers. Friedman himself couldn't decide whether to be amused or annoyed by the obloquies; he later wryly noted that he had given communist dictatorships the same advice he gave Pinochet, without raising leftist hackles.
As for Chile, Pinochet appointed a succession of Chicago Boys to senior economic posts. By 1990, the year he ceded power, per capita GDP had risen by 40% (in 2005 dollars) even as Peru and Argentina stagnated. Pinochet's democratic successors—all of them nominally left-of-center—only deepened the liberalization drive. Result: Chileans have become South America's richest people. They have the continent's lowest level of corruption, the lowest infant-mortality rate, and the lowest number of people living below the poverty line.
Chile also has some of the world's strictest building codes. That makes sense for a country that straddles two massive tectonic plates. But having codes is one thing, enforcing them is another. The quality and consistency of enforcement is typically correlated to the wealth of nations. The poorer the country, the likelier people are to scrimp on rebar, or use poor quality concrete, or lie about compliance. In the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, thousands of children were buried under schools also built according to code.
In "The Shock Doctrine," Ms. Klein titles one of her sub-chapters "The Myth of the Chilean Miracle." In her reading, the only thing Friedman and the Chicago Boys accomplished was to "hoover wealth up to the top and shock much of the middle class out of existence." Actual Chileans of all classes—living in the aftermath of an actual shock—may take a different view of Friedman, who helped give them the wherewithal first to survive the quake, and now to build their lives anew.
quote:[...]
There is one rather large problem with this theory: Chile's modern seismic building code, drafted to resist earthquakes, was adopted in 1972. That year is enormously significant because it was one year before Pinochet seized power in a bloody US-backed coup. That means that if one person deserves credit for the law, it is not Friedman, or Pinochet, but Salvador Allende, Chile's democratically elected socialist President. (In truth many Chileans deserve credit, since the laws were a response to a history of quakes, and the first law was adopted in the 1930s).
It does seem significant, however, that the law was enacted even in the midst of a crippling economic embargo ("make the economy scream" Richard Nixon famously growled after Allende won the 1970 elections). The code was later updated in the nineties, well after Pinochet and the Chicago Boys were finally out of power and democracy was restored. Little wonder: As Paul Krugman points out, Friedman was ambivalent about building codes, seeing them as yet another infringement on capitalist freedom.
As for the argument that Friedmanite policies are the reason Chileans live in "houses of brick" instead of "straw," it's clear that Stephens knows nothing of pre-coup Chile. The Chile of the 1960s had the best health and education systems on the continent, as well as a vibrant industrial sector and rapidly expanding middle class. Chileans believed in their state, which is why they elected Allende to take the project even further.
[...]
De Chileense samenleving was al vrij, en had in alle vrijheid Allende gekozen. Alleen zag onder andere AT&T de nationalisatie van de kopermijnen niet zo zitten, en werd het verkozen staatshoofd samen met nog 3000 anderen vermoord, en werden daarna nog eens het tienvoudige aantal burgers gemarteld en vermoord.quote:Op zondag 28 maart 2010 09:55 schreef Ribbenburg het volgende:
[..]
Friedman's eigen kijk op de zaak:
"Chilean economy did very well, but more important, in the end the central government, the military junta, was replaced by a democratic society. So the really important thing about the Chilean business is that free markets did work their way in bringing about a free society."
bron
Friedman gelooft dat hij de wegbereider is geweest van een vrijere maatschappij.
Dus ik zie het heilzame van de dictatoriale tussenfase niet. Ja, heilzaam voor de VS en GB, en het rijkste deel van de Chilenen. Maar niet in de zin van een 'free society'.
Bring democracy heet het voor buitenlands gebruik, binnenlands heet het al democracy and free market, alsof mensen niet democratisch voor iets anders dan een vrije markteconomie zouden kunnen kiezen. Laat democracy eruit, en je hebt de realiteit. Met die aantekening dat free market slaat op de vrijheid van grote bedrijven om van de situatie van politieke en economische onderdrukking misbruik te maken om het land in kwestie zo snel mogelijk leeg te trekken.
Wees gehoorzaam. Alleen samen krijgen we de vrijheid eronder.
Inderdaad...als een zwerm sprinkhanen over een maisveld...quote:Op zondag 28 maart 2010 12:23 schreef Weltschmerz het volgende:
[..]
De Chileense samenleving was al vrij, en had in alle vrijheid Allende gekozen. Alleen zag onder andere AT&T de nationalisatie van de kopermijnen niet zo zitten, en werd het verkozen staatshoofd samen met nog 3000 anderen vermoord, en werden daarna nog eens het tienvoudige aantal burgers gemarteld en vermoord.
Dus ik zie het heilzame van de dictatoriale tussenfase niet. Ja, heilzaam voor de VS en GB, en het rijkste deel van de Chilenen. Maar niet in de zin van een 'free society'.
Bring democracy heet het voor buitenlands gebruik, binnenlands heet het al democracy and free market, alsof mensen niet democratisch voor iets anders dan een vrije markteconomie zouden kunnen kiezen. Laat democracy eruit, en je hebt de realiteit. Met die aantekening dat free market slaat op de vrijheid van grote bedrijven om van de situatie van politieke en economische onderdrukking misbruik te maken om het land in kwestie zo snel mogelijk leeg te trekken.
http://www.mrwonkish.nl Eurocrisis, Documentaires, Economie
Die romantiek van dat je een Indiaan een schop onder zijn hol geeft en dan een papiertje tekent en hup, het land met alles wat erop en eronder zit is van jou is natuurlijk wel heel leuk, zo werkt het nergens.quote:Op zondag 28 maart 2010 13:04 schreef Bolkesteijn het volgende:
[..]
Niet in wat ik een vrije samenleving noem.
Als er een weg aangelegd wordt, moet er onteigend worden. Het gas hier is niet van een paar Groningse boeren die daarmee de rijkste aardbewoners zijn geworden, sterker nog, het is niet eens voor de Groningers, het geld wordt volledig naar het westen gebracht. De VS als staat claimt ook gewoon olievelden voor de kust, het was aan de "Irakese" regering om de concessies aan Shell en BP te geven.
Dat is de realiteit van de free society. Ook best handig hoor, wegen.
Wees gehoorzaam. Alleen samen krijgen we de vrijheid eronder.
Had je onder het mom van 'free society' dan liever gezien dat Wouter Bos de banken niet had genationaliseerd?quote:Op zondag 28 maart 2010 13:03 schreef Bolkesteijn het volgende:
Een 'free society' waarin nationalisaties plaats vinden.
Nouja, het begon over dit boek:quote:Op zondag 28 maart 2010 14:04 schreef TheVotary het volgende:
Was het etentje voor de rest nog wel gezellig?
Het gesprek ging ongeveer zo:
Ik: "Ik ga naar de boekpresentatie van 'Conservatieve Vooruitgang'"
Ma: "Ben jij zo conservatief dan?"
Ik: "Mwoah, redelijk, misschien wat meer klassiek-liberaal. "
Ma: "Zijn die lui ook tegen de marrokanen?"
Ik: "Euh, het boek is een essay bundel van belangrijke conservatieve denkers. Zoals bijvoorbeeld F.A Hayek. Dat is wel interessant, want Hayek en Friedman worden door Kinneging genoemd als aanhangers van het verlichtingsdenken, waar de conservatieven zo tegen zijn, dus ik zou wel eens willen weten wat dan precies de relatie tussen het conservatisme en klassiek-liberalisme is. Kan ik tijdens die presentatie mooi vragen."
Pa: "Ja, Friedman was niet zo'n beste kerel, die steunde het bloedige regime van Pinochet."
Ma: "Ben jij een voorstander van Pinochet?"
Ik: "Euh...."
"Ik ben een voorstander van de vrije markt. Wat pinochet allemaal gedaan heeft weet ik verder niet." Ma:
quote:Op zondag 28 maart 2010 15:19 schreef Illiberal het volgende:
[..]
Nouja, het begon over dit boek:
[ afbeelding ]
Ik: "Mwoah, redelijk, misschien wat meer klassiek-liberaal. "
Ma: "Zijn die lui ook tegen de marrokanen?"
http://www.mrwonkish.nl Eurocrisis, Documentaires, Economie
Haha ja de steun voor Pinochet als middel om bepaalde economische denkbeelden in de praktijk te brengen is inderdaad geen erg sterk punt van Friedman en consorten.
Als het niet wil branden moet je beter stoken.
In dit licht is The End of History and the Last Man van Francis Fukuyama ook erg interessant. Hij betoogt dat kapitalisme automatisch een mechanisme in gang zet waarbij door de accumulatie van kapitaal leidt tot de opkomst van een middenklasse die haar echten opeist en zodoende een democratie creëert.
Hij noemt onder andere Chili als voorbeeld van een land dat door economische vrijheid (opheffen van handelsbarrieres) zich kon ontwikkelen tot een welvarend en democratisch land, itt omringende landen die een socialistisch (en vaak ook dictatoriaal) regime hadden. Ik had tijdens het lezen de indruk dat hij vaak wat vergoelijkend deed over rechtse (fascistisch in zijn woorden) regimes tov linkse (totalitaire, FF), omdat rechtse regimes ondanks alle moorden tenminste voor economische vrijheid zorgden.
Feit is dat Chili het rijkste en meest ontwikkelde land in Zuid-Amerika is, maar ik zou niet durven beweren dat Pinochet minder fout was dan andere dictators.
[ Bericht 0% gewijzigd door Schadenfreude op 28-03-2010 21:02:14 ]
Hij noemt onder andere Chili als voorbeeld van een land dat door economische vrijheid (opheffen van handelsbarrieres) zich kon ontwikkelen tot een welvarend en democratisch land, itt omringende landen die een socialistisch (en vaak ook dictatoriaal) regime hadden. Ik had tijdens het lezen de indruk dat hij vaak wat vergoelijkend deed over rechtse (fascistisch in zijn woorden) regimes tov linkse (totalitaire, FF), omdat rechtse regimes ondanks alle moorden tenminste voor economische vrijheid zorgden.
Feit is dat Chili het rijkste en meest ontwikkelde land in Zuid-Amerika is, maar ik zou niet durven beweren dat Pinochet minder fout was dan andere dictators.
[ Bericht 0% gewijzigd door Schadenfreude op 28-03-2010 21:02:14 ]
"I can accept failure. I can not accept not trying."
Fukuyama zou ik ook maar niet te hoog aanslaan. Die man heeft evenals de Chicago Boys een beperkt begrip van cultuur en samenleving.quote:Op zondag 28 maart 2010 18:34 schreef Schadenfreude het volgende:
In dit licht is The End of History and the Last Man van Francis Fukuyama ook erg interessant. Hij betoogt dat kapitalisme automatisch een mechanisme in gang zet waarbij door de accumulatie van kapitaal leidt tot de opkomst van een middenklasse die haar echten opeist en zodoende een democratie creëert.
Hij noemt onder andere Chili als voorbeeld van een land dat door economische vrijheid (opheffen van handelsbarrieres) zich kon ontwikkelen tot een welvarend en democratisch land, itt omringende landen die een socialistisch (en vaak ook dictatoriaal) regime hadden. Ik had tijdens het lezen de indruk dat hij vaak wat vergoelijkend deed over rechtse (fascistisch in zijn woorden) regimes tov linkse (totalitaire, FF), omdat rechtse regimes ondanks alle moorden tenminste voor economische vrijheid zorgden.
Feit is dat Chili het rijkste en meest ontwikkelde land in Zuid-Amerika is, maar ik zou niet durven beweren dat Pinochet minder fout was dan andere dictators.
Goed plan, andere mensen dwingen zich te vormen naar jouw "vrije samenleving".quote:Op zondag 28 maart 2010 13:04 schreef Bolkesteijn het volgende:
[..]
Niet in wat ik een vrije samenleving noem.
Doet me denken aan iets. Wat weet ik niet meer. O ja. Communisten.
quote:Op zondag 28 maart 2010 15:19 schreef Illiberal het volgende:
[..]
"Wat pinochet allemaal gedaan heeft weet ik verder niet."
wir haben es nicht gewusst
Volgens mij hebben progressieven geen fatsoenlijke argumenten tegen de economische theorie van Friedman dus gaan ze maar zeuren over Pinochet om een inhoudelijke discussie te mijden. Ik heb van ma- en pa lief geen visie gehoord over wat de FED moet doen.quote:
Conservatief = Friedman = Pinochet
Zoiets. Ik weet niet hoor, maar mij boeit het meer om te weten wat de FED wel en niet zou moeten doen.
Who was Milton Friedman?
Vooral het laatste stuk is lezenswaardig:
Vooral het laatste stuk is lezenswaardig:
quote:[...]
In his 1965 review of Friedman and Schwartz's Monetary History, the late Yale economist and Nobel laureate James Tobin gently chided the authors for going too far. "Consider the following three propositions," he wrote. "Money does not matter. It does too matter. Money is all that matters. It is all too easy to slip from the second proposition to the third." And he added that "in their zeal and exuberance" Friedman and his followers had too often done just that.
A similar sequence seems to have happened in Milton Friedman's advocacy of laissez-faire. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, there were many people saying that markets can never work. Friedman had the intellectual courage to say that markets can too work, and his showman's flair combined with his ability to marshal evidence made him the best spokesman for the virtues of free markets since Adam Smith. But he slipped all too easily into claiming both that markets always work and that only markets work. It's extremely hard to find cases in which Friedman acknowledged the possibility that markets could go wrong, or that government intervention could serve a useful purpose.
Friedman's laissez-faire absolutism contributed to an intellectual climate in which faith in markets and disdain for government often trumps the evidence. Developing countries rushed to open up their capital markets, despite warnings that this might expose them to financial crises; then, when the crises duly arrived, many observers blamed the countries' governments, not the instability of international capital flows. Electricity deregulation proceeded despite clear warnings that monopoly power might be a problem; in fact, even as the California electricity crisis was happening, most commentators dismissed concerns about price-rigging as wild conspiracy theories. Conservatives continue to insist that the free market is the answer to the health care crisis, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
What's odd about Friedman's absolutism on the virtues of markets and the vices of government is that in his work as an economist's economist he was actually a model of restraint. As I pointed out earlier, he made great contributions to economic theory by emphasizing the role of individual rationality—but unlike some of his colleagues, he knew where to stop. Why didn't he exhibit the same restraint in his role as a public intellectual?
The answer, I suspect, is that he got caught up in an essentially political role. Milton Friedman the great economist could and did acknowledge ambiguity. But Milton Friedman the great champion of free markets was expected to preach the true faith, not give voice to doubts. And he ended up playing the role his followers expected. As a result, over time the refreshing iconoclasm of his early career hardened into a rigid defense of what had become the new orthodoxy.
In the long run, great men are remembered for their strengths, not their weaknesses, and Milton Friedman was a very great man indeed—a man of intellectual courage who was one of the most important economic thinkers of all time, and possibly the most brilliant communicator of economic ideas to the general public that ever lived. But there's a good case for arguing that Friedmanism, in the end, went too far, both as a doctrine and in its practical applications. When Friedman was beginning his career as a public intellectual, the times were ripe for a counterreformation against Keynesianism and all that went with it. But what the world needs now, I'd argue, is a counter-counterreformation.
Oh Krugman:quote:Op maandag 29 maart 2010 10:21 schreef Ribbenburg het volgende:
Who was Milton Friedman?
Vooral het laatste stuk is lezenswaardig:
[..]
quote:There’s nothing liberals love more than apologizing for the misdeeds of others. Recently in the New York Times Magazine, Paul Krugman took it to an extreme with his 6,670-word article titled “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?”.
Don’t bother reading it. It’s clear that he still doesn’t get it and definitely isn’t looking for any real answers.
Just the length of the piece is comical. We imagine poor Paul gazing out the window of his New York Times office searching for just one more quote, one more study, one more insight to help redeem his profession and his reputation in the wake of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
Because in Krugman’s ivory tower and on the Times editorial board, economics still matters and no debate about stimulus packages or health care plans or financial regulation would be complete without his unique and important insights. He’s too big to fail and worth every word. And who could edit him anyway? He won a Nobel Prize.
Over here in reality, most of us already know that he and those that follow in his footsteps have no reputation to salvage. As the chief hand waver for the liberal establishment, Krugman is ready at a moment’s notice to pen op-eds and cite studies that support any policy that his progressive paymasters dream up, even if it defies the most basic economic principles.
Economics is a subject that students love to hate, and I was no exception. Much of it is so theoretical that it is not just a waste of time, but in obvious conflict with the real world. For example, in Macro, I was taught that having both low inflation and low unemployment was impossible, even though thankfully America has accomplished this for most of my working life.
Still, two economic concepts did penetrate the fog: “supply and demand” and “incentives matter.” They are intuitive, easy to understand and apply, and deadly weapons against progressive economic policies.
Take ObamaCare, an easy target. According to the Democrats’ dubious accounting there are 30 to 45 million uninsured. But once the government starts to offer quality health insurance priced below-market, why wouldn’t every single American have an incentive to sign up? Especially when their employers decide that it is easier to pay the fine than to provide care? Incentives matter.
Then supply and demand enters the picture. More patients means more demand for doctors, which would normally be a good thing for the profession. Yet the government is capping and cutting reimbursements, which reduces the supply of medical care. It’s Jimmy Carter all over again, but with lines at the “free” clinic instead of the gas pump.
Does it end there? No, it never ends. Patients still want care, so they buy supplemental private insurance policies. The best doctors exit public care and patient wait times increase and quality deteriorates. And although the government should be happy to get a few patients off the rolls, just ask anyone in the UK or Australia what the general attitude is to private insurance and care.
Apply supply and demand and incentives, and its obvious that progressive policies disrupt markets, kill jobs, and destroy wealth. History is full of examples, and we don’t need to turn to the wreckage of the Soviet empire. Amity Shales wrote an excellent book, the Forgotten Man, that describes how President Roosevelt’s policies during and after the Great Depression harmed the very people they were supposed to help for at least a decade.
What’s maddening is that Krugman and his kind aren’t completely ignorant of supply and demand and incentives. They know that with the right economic policies in place, America – in other words, you — can be on the right side of the social justice fight. Your carbon and soda tax dollars can pay GE and the green jobs czar whatever is necessary to turn America — yes, you again – into a country of green global citizens supporting multiculturalism and diversity.
Progressives wielding junk science is nothing new, but economics is a particularly attractive target because it is a soft science masquerading as a hard one. It is a social science, like sociology or anthropology, and an economist is simply someone, anyone, who studies the economy in whatever way they choose to do so.
That’s why a list of economists can include Karl Marx, Milton Friedman, Adam Smith, John Keynes, Ludwig Von Mises, and J.K. Galbraith. They share no inviolate principles or even common subject boundaries, only a common interest in how societies produce and consume.
To call economics a social science is no insult, as human society is certainly worthy of study. The danger is that social sciences are especially vulnerable to subjectivity and political bias.
Still, before anyone makes the feeble relativist argument that there are no good and bad economists and each has their own valid view, let’s defer to Henry Hazlitt, an economist and writer for the Wall Street Journal who is credited with bringing Hayek ‘s Road to Serfdom to the American reader:
The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
In just one line from his insightful, accessible, and freely available book, Economics in One Lesson, Hazlitt tells you where to find the Forgotten Man — just keep looking around and ahead.
By this definition, and by any reasonable application of critical thinking, the Obama administration is getting their advice from bad economists.
For despite their Ph.Ds, they can’t or won’t think through the long-term consequences of a nanny-state blank check government that can take over car companies with no vote, reorganize the health care or energy industry in a few weeks of debate, and spend a trillion dollars it doesn’t have on stuff it doesn’t need.
If Krugman wants to write an article about how economists got it so wrong, that’s low hanging fruit. Just explain why people like him, who undoubtedly know better, feel compelled to carry the progressives’ water and give their policies credence. Why does he follow the party line instead of doing genuine analysis and research?
For example, what is his opinion of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? Was it a good idea to funnel taxpayer dollars into the riskiest home mortgages? The past, present, and future of our multi-trillion dollar progressive loan-guarantee programs is one of the most important economic issues facing our nation and was at the core of the financial crisis, but predictably Krugman doesn’t spare a word in his lengthy article.
The irony is that your job, or at least your career, is probably more secure than Krugman’s. Not just because he works for the troubled New York Times, an economic satire of itself, but because the role of a progressive cheerleader with a graduate degree in economics seems like a much easier one to fill than that of a genuine scientist.
As a modern-day Lysenko, he contributes nothing to the field, but simply burns through whatever credibility he once had at a dizzying rate. He didn’t predict the financial crisis, and he was wrong about the stimulus. As the errors, justifications, and blusters mount, at a certain point even the progressives will tire of him and look for someone else that can sell the story without reminding us of their past failings.
Still, as long as there are progressive funds flowing to progressive publications and organizations, there will be progressive economists. It’s just their job to use their credentials to convince and confuse, promoting social justice and progressive causes in the guise of economic science.
And for those of us not on the Soros-ACORN payroll, it’s our job as intelligent American citizens to discredit them before they can do any further damage. As Hazlitt wrote in 1946:
We are already suffering the long-run consequences of the policies of the remote or recent past. Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore.
Zijn beoordeling van Milton Friedman als publiek intellectueel lijkt me juist dus ik heb geen idee wat je hier mee probeert te bewijzen behalve dan dat Krugman geen heilige is.quote:
Paul Krugman stelt dat Friedman niet altijd 100% voor de markt was als ik het goed begrijp?quote:Op maandag 29 maart 2010 12:14 schreef Ribbenburg het volgende:
[..]
Zijn beoordeling van Milton Friedman als publiek intellectueel lijkt me juist dus ik heb geen idee wat je hier mee probeert te bewijzen behalve dan dat Krugman geen heilige is.
Dat dus.quote:Op zondag 28 maart 2010 17:19 schreef du_ke het volgende:
Haha ja de steun voor Pinochet als middel om bepaalde economische denkbeelden in de praktijk te brengen is inderdaad geen erg sterk punt van Friedman en consorten.
[b]@RemiLehmann[/b]
Lees eerst het artikel eens.quote:Op maandag 29 maart 2010 12:33 schreef Illiberal het volgende:
[..]
Paul Krugman stelt dat Friedman niet altijd 100% voor de markt was als ik het goed begrijp?
Krugman erkent dat Friedman als economist de eer toekomt voor zijn werk, maar dat zijn rol als publiek intellectueel ervoor gezorgd heeft dat hij de messias van de Vrije Markt ging uithangen en een dogmatische boodschap begon te verkondigen.
Ik heb het artikel gelezen. Dat de markt niet altijd en overal werkbaar is, geloof ik best. Maar volgens mij was Friedman ook geen dogmatisch marktdenker.quote:Op maandag 29 maart 2010 12:48 schreef Ribbenburg het volgende:
[..]
Lees eerst het artikel eens.
Krugman erkent dat Friedman als economist de eer toekomt voor zijn werk, maar dat zijn rol als publiek intellectueel ervoor gezorgd heeft dat hij de messias van de Vrije Markt ging uithangen en een dogmatische boodschap begon te verkondigen.
Ik zou Murray Rothbard dogmatischer willen noemen.
Nog een stukkie vanuit Oostenrijks perspectief:
http://krugman-in-wonderl(...)chilean-fantasy.htmlquote:Krugman's Chilean Fantasy
Paul Krugman never ceases to amaze me with how he dishonestly rewrites history. Indeed, he does not so much give us history as he does Democrat-Socialist talking points, which he shouts out while holding his ears shut.
In this blog post, Krugman claims that relative free markets established after the Marxist Allende government fell in 1973 had nothing to do with Chile's prosperity today or the fact that the recent earthquake that hit the country -- one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded -- had a relatively small death toll, especially compared to the carnage in Haiti. As usual, the post has a number of howlers. Take the following, for example:
Actually, as you can see from the chart above, what happened was this: Chile had a huge economic crisis in the early 70s, which was, yes, partly due to Allende and the accompanying turmoil. Then the country experienced a recovery driven in large part by massive capital inflows, which mostly consisted of making up the lost ground. Then there was a huge crisis again in the early 1980s — part of the broader Latin debt crisis, but Chile was hit much worse than other major players. It wasn’t until the late 1980s, by which time the hard-line free-market policies had been considerably softened, that Chile finally moved definitively ahead of where it had been in the early 70s.
So: free-market policies are applied, and presto! prosperity follows — fifteen years later.
Ah! Where does one begin? First, Krugman glosses over the fact that Allende was trying to establish a full communist state. His government seized businesses, both foreign and domestic, printed money out the wazoo (creating 1,000 percent inflation), erected huge tariffs and trade barriers, and decimated civil liberties. Yeah, I guess that would cause some economic problems.
Next, just why might have Chile experienced some capital inflows following the overthrow of Allende? Maybe it was because the new government promised not to seize capital invested in Chile by foreign firms, and maybe because the government lowered many of its trade barriers.
Chile was hardly the only country to experience a serious recession in the early 1980s. As I recall, a country named the United States of America suffered its biggest downturn since the Great Depression, and, like Chile, had a robust recovery. There is no doubt that Chile has a much more free economy than do most Latin American countries, and also has a higher standard of living. (I'm sure Krugman has another explanation for Chile's prosperity. Maybe it finally is experiencing the "good effects" of all that money Allende printed nearly 40 years ago.)
As for the country's survival rate following the earthquake, Krugman writes:
As a number of people have pointed out, there’s this little matter of building codes. Friedman wasn’t exactly fond of such codes — see this interview in which he calls such codes a form of government spending, because they “impose costs that you might not privately want to engage in”.
First, building codes by themselves are meaningless. One must have the wherewithall to build structures that actually meet codes. Second, Chile has a strong record of private property rights.
Haiti, on the other hand does not. I recently read that about 80 percent of Haitians live on land of which no one holds clear title. That means that people basically are squatters, and squatters do not build strong buildings. (I am sure that Haiti also has building codes, but even the presidential palace was heavily damaged and the Haiti earthquake was not nearly as strong as what recently hit Chile.)
Being a good socialist, however, Krugman is going to claim that Chile's survival rate following the earthquake is due entirely to state power. And there is one more issue to address: the false notion that economic booms immediately follow economic liberalization.
That often is not the case, as what we saw in the early 1980s. Economies that are heavily regulated or have a lot of state ownership engage in malinvestments that cannot stand after an economy is liberalized. Indeed, given the massive malinvestments and the utter chaos that accompanied the Allende government, I would expect Chile's recovery to take a long time after liberalization, and that is what happened.
However, Keynesians believe that all economies are homogeneous, and that all a government needs to do is add money. Interestingly, that is exactly what Allende did, and even Krugman's little graph does not show that the communist government brought prosperity.
Guess Krugman needs to go back to the drawing board.
Ik vind de discussie wie en hoe er economische groei in Chili is bereikt wat minder interessant, dan tegen welke prijs zulke vooruitgang is geboekt. De invoering van zulke markt-georiënteerde maatregelen was niet mogelijk geweest in een democratisch bestel. Alleen dankzij een quasi-fascistisch bewind waarin de overheid politieke tegenstanders vermoordde, martelde of het land uitschopte heeft men de economie grondig kunnen herstructureren. Dat kun je Friedman persoonlijk natuurlijk niet kwalijk nemen, maar om dan zo 'trots' te zijn op de behaalde resultaten is ook ongepast.
[b]@RemiLehmann[/b]
Wanneer je over Friedman wilt discussiëren moet je toch tenminste even de zaken van elkaar scheiden:
Friedman als liberaal. Friedman was een voorstander van vrijmarktkapitalisme en (daaraan gekoppeld) ook een voorstander van andere vormen van 'vrijheid', zoals legalisering van drugshandel en vrij wapenbezit. Hij was dus eigenlijk vooral een libertariër, zij het niet van het meest radicale soort (geen anarchist, dus). Dat is één aspect waarover je kunt discussiëren (dus over de ideologie van het liberalisme/libertarisme)
Friedman als monetarist. Gekoppeld aan zijn vrijmarktdenken onderzocht hij de werking van geld. Zijn centrale standpunt was dat de geldgroei ongeveer evenredig moest zijn aan de economische groei, om de prijzen stabiel te houden. Hij koos hiermee tegen de Keynesiaanse doctrine, maar ook tegen de voorstanders van een goudstandaard.
Friedman en de invloed van het neoliberalisme in geopolitieke zin. En dan zijn we bij Pinochet. Nu was Friedman geen voorstander van dictaturen natuurlijk, maar zijn ideeën hebben wel natuurlijk het doen en denken van deze dictator gevoed. Het probleem dat zich vooral aandient, is dat dit bewijst dat een vrije markt niet 'spontaan ontstaat'. Dat komt doordat er ook altijd tegenstanders zijn. Een zeer vrije markt kun je paradoxaal genoeg dus alleen opleggen, tenzij er een groot draagvlak voor is (al is ook dat een dictatuur van de meerderheid), maar voor het vergaande laissezfaire denken van Friedman is in de meeste landen geen draagvlak en dat roept de vraag op wat het je waard is. Ik vind dat moeilijk te zeggen. Ik ben ook een groot tegenstander van het socialisme, maar de ene (mogelijke) onvrijheid vervangen door de andere, n.b. in naam van iets dat zich 'liberalisme' noemt, is wel wat tegenstrijdig. Anderzijds: moeten we het andere landen toestaan zich te ontpoppen tot Marxistische heilstaten, als we weten dat dat vroeg of laat mis zal gaan?
PS, Illiberal: Friedman was dus een liberaal, géén conservatief. F. A. Hayek ook niet, al heeft er natuurlijk wel hier en daar wat kruisbestuiving plaatsgevonden.
Why I am NOT a conservative
[ Bericht 7% gewijzigd door sneakypete op 29-03-2010 19:58:48 ]
PS, Illiberal: Friedman was dus een liberaal, géén conservatief. F. A. Hayek ook niet, al heeft er natuurlijk wel hier en daar wat kruisbestuiving plaatsgevonden.
Why I am NOT a conservative
[ Bericht 7% gewijzigd door sneakypete op 29-03-2010 19:58:48 ]
Ik vind van wel. Het is aan de lokale bevolking om te kiezen welk economisch systeem men wil implementeren in een land. Als je als internationale gemeenschap de boodschap uitdraagt dat een socialistische heilstaat niet getolereerd zal worden, dan zal dat alleen maar leiden tot polarisatie van het politieke spectrum. Dat hebben we in de jaren '60/'70 heel duidelijk gezien in Latijns-Amerika. Omdat er geen democratische wijze was om het socialisme in te voeren (omdat men dan vervolgd werd of het leger dan een staatsgreep pleegde) grepen veel linkse idealisten naar de wapens. We moeten nu niet weer dezelfde fout maken...quote:Op maandag 29 maart 2010 19:47 schreef sneakypete het volgende:
Anderzijds: moeten we het andere landen toestaan zich te ontpoppen tot Marxistische heilstaten, als we weten dat dat vroeg of laat mis zal gaan?
[b]@RemiLehmann[/b]
|
|
