Posted on 06/27/2008 10:34:26 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Considering the many jubilant boasts by "flat world" devotees in recent years, you might have been tempted to regard economic globalization as a juggernaut, powered by inexorable forces of technology and history.
Big mistake. There's no preordained direction for the world economy--only an undetermined future that will take the shape of whatever ideas and policies we choose to uphold. The lack of an intellectual defense of capitalism has left free markets vulnerable. "The power of the state is reasserting itself," said Daniel Yergin, co-author of The Commanding Heights and a free-market optimist , in The Wall Street Journal recently.
In Latin America, the pro-market reforms of the 1990s are being swallowed by resurgent nationalism. Hugo Chavez's program for national socialism in Venezuela includes the seizure of foreign assets in oil, mining, cement, steel, telecommunications and electricity.
Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and neighboring nations have fallen into step with Venezuela, further chilling international trade. Argentina, burdened by high inflation, recently imposed taxes on grain exports so painful that farmers went on strike nationwide.
Russia has pursued nationalization less noisily than Chavez, using selective prosecution and other threats to bully foreign investors like British Petroleum (nyse: BP - news - people ) into surrendering valuable oil and natural gas interests. Even England--which for decades embraced Margaret Thatcher's privatization program, despite a long tradition of state-run enterprise--decided earlier this year to nationalize a private bank, Northern Rock (other-otc: NHRKF.PK - news - people ).
Other ominous symptoms of nationalism's growth are the massive sovereign wealth funds springing up in the Middle East, China, Brazil and wherever else oil and export revenues fatten up government coffers instead of private balance sheets.
The International Monetary Fund estimates such funds may control $12 trillion in assets globally by 2012, up from $3 trillion today. . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
How do Randians propose to take care of the sick and stupid. If the answer, as I suspect is, “we don’t” then I think they will continue to be a fringe philospohical movement.
Socialism sucks, in many ways. (Althought I find multiculturalism even worse). But raw capitalism has a checkered record too. I remember Love Canal. Etc.
Randians have lots of axioms that they just KNOW are true. So do Moslem extremists. The rest of us seem to operate with a few more shades of grey, where all the real solutions seem to be found.
Still, there is always a place for principled idealism.
I remember "Return to Love Canal".
Love Canal was not the result raw capitalism, it was the result of government arrogance.
Hooker Chemical refused to sell the land to school board on the grounds that it was too dangerous, but the school board pressured them into selling the land, which they did for $1.
OK. But they still dumped chemicals in a canal for 30 years. Um, they were chemists!! Don’t tell me that it didn’t occur to them that that was a completely irresposible thing to do long before the houses went up.
You mean that clay-lined canal which they warned the school board not to build a school over because of the chemicals?
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