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From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Hunger and the Free Market
Message-ID: <115@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Aug-85 14:55:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.115
Posted: Fri Aug  9 14:55:30 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 13-Aug-85 02:19:24 EDT
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. Chicago, Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lines: 31
Keywords: democracy, corporations, Venezuela

Oded Feingold writes:

>This message does not explain why 
>	>the majority of Venezuelans are ...
>							>malnourished.

True enough, nor did my article contain an explanation, but it is
explained in considerable detail in *Hunger in a Land of Plenty* by
George W. Schuyler, who is (or was) director of Ibero/American
Studies at SUNY/Stony Brook.  The principal reason for the widespread
hunger in Venezuela seems to be that our wonderful American system of
food production and distribution has taken hold there.  

Schuyler suggests that political democracy may be a luxury that
developing nations cannot afford.  He writes:

	The interplay between Venezuela's democracy and its economic
	system thus illustrates one of Prof. [Charles] Lindblom's
	conclusions -- that market systems have dual structures of
	authority.  One is the Venezuelan goverment, subjected to
	passive control by a media-manipulated electorate every five
	years.  The other is the business system whose influence and
	authority rivals that of the government and whose values
	permeate Venezuela's political leadership.

In all existing democracies, large private corporations more or less
severely limit the exercise of democracy.  As Lindblom puts it, "The
large private corporation fits oddly into democratic theory.  Indeed,
it does not fit."

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes