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From: ucbesvax.turner@ucbcad.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: A Response to Jeff Myers Note - (nf)
Message-ID: <616@ucbcad.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 28-May-83 19:04:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.616
Posted: Sat May 28 19:04:23 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 3-Jun-83 06:06:02 EDT
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#R:trw-unix:-20700:ucbesvax:7500016:000:2877
ucbesvax!turner    May 28 17:12:00 1983


In all, I think Prudence's examples (hackneyed as they may be) are fair
examples of how government bureaucracy and efficient business operation
are inimical.  This is not to register total agreement, however.

Prudence needs some correction, or we need some clarification from her,
when she says:

> While it is true that the USSR suffered during WWII, Germany and
> Japan both suffered more, yet the free market has allowed entrepeneurs to
> rebuild the countries.  The stifling Soviet bureaucracy has prevented this
> mechanism from working.  Let us also dispell the notion that the Soviet
> Union was some sort of primitive backwater at the time of the Revolution.
> In 1910, the USSR was the fifth largest industrial nation in the world
> and a net exporter of food.  Communism has had such a crippling effect
> on a naturally productive nation that countries as devoid of resources
> as Switzerland have long surpassed them.

Umm...is she forgetting the Marshall Plan, in the case of Germany?  I don't
think you can say, outright, that they could have done it without significant
government intervention on the part of the U.S.  In Japan, it's even less
a case of "entrepreneurial" capitalism--industrialization was a very explicit
GOVERNMENT policy--and key industries were parcelled out to old (formerly
feudal) ruling families, not to the most competitive--who didn't exist yet.
MacArthur didn't do much to change this, but it is notable that he oversaw
one the world's more successful land-reform programs.

(And, as matters stand now, the Japanese use the market economy as a
testing ground for new industries; the ones that survive get to benefit
by government support.  This is a sight better than the U.S. "bailout"
policy for the Good Ol' Boy industrialists.)

As for Russia being the fifth largest industrial nation in the world before
the revolution--what does this mean?  Lithium is the THIRD lightest element
in the table but you couldn't fill a balloon with it and expect it to float.
Perhaps industrial-output-per-capita would be a better measure.  And I think
THAT figure would put Russia well behind most of Europe at the time.

Prudence, again:

> Let me end with a lesson from history.  Laissez-faire capitalism is the
> only form of economy in history that has coincided with freedom and
> prosperity.  The unending cycle of stagflation and recession that we
> have been suffering for nearly 20 years is a direct result of having
> abandoned such an economy.

Not a very good historical lesson.  When and where has laissez-faire
existed?  She gives no examples.  In any case, freedom and prosperity
are relative terms in this unfree and still rather impoverished world.
For me, it suffices to point out that Milton Friedman's economic god-
child, General Pinochet of Chile, will never stand among the world's
great libertarians.

					Michael Turner