Offering constructive criticism to the social cripples in our midst since early 2005.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
See China. "They'll be a democracy one of these days. And it will be the result of their free market policies."

That's the nice thing about a tautology. It's so, well, taut.

And supple? Oops, wrong board.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
I would think that torture -- changing people's behavior through sheer force and the threat of force -- would be a significant market distortion.

Actually, it's the ultimate paradigm for the economic expresssion "ceterus paribus". (hi, Gwinky!) "Do as you are told or we will kill you and rape your wife".

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by taxwonk
Actually, it's the ultimate paradigm for the economic expresssion "ceterus paribus". (hi, Gwinky!) "Do as you are told or we will kill you and rape your wife".

You can tell fringey doesn't have kids. Every parent with a kid of at least 3 Years knows this is just the Disney business plan.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Always get rich? Always turn into a Democracy?

First, I'm not sure you've got "free market" dictators, in these countries. Yeh, Singapore's pretty close, but Indonesia? Ever heard of Pertamina? Korea has had a significant nationalized industrial sector as well. We'll leave aside Fringey's point that torture defines your country, and market, as unfree, something your Chicago boys never got.

So if you point out a few non free market aspects of these countries that blows my whole theory. Sorry. Doesn't work that way. That is like saying, well the US market isn't totally free so that shows socialism works. These countrys may not have been perfect in free markets, but the more free market the better they did. In Asia, the country with the freest markets did the best - Singapore. Countries with the most closed systesm did the worst.

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy And, in terms of wealth, the number of Chilean's below the povery line doubled, from 20% to 40%, as a percentage of the population during the 70s and 80s. Chile also features an enormous bail out of private industry, with the government assuming $16 billion in debt (leaving it with one of the worst debt burdens of any country in the world) and subsidizing private industry by selling it nationalized businesses at fire-sale prices. And don't forget about the repression of labor unions -- but, wait, you're going to argue that the freedom to organize is not part of a market economy, right? So is all this what you mean by free market? Yeh, free-market Chrysler style. So are you sure you want Chile to be the post-child for free markets? .

Where did you get this stuff? A cite would be nice. Are you saying that Chile did not do well in the 70s and 80s. Or that the economy was not free. Because if you are saying both that negates your argument. Chile had the freest economy in Latin America in the past thirty five years and it has had the strongest growth. Are you saying that is wrong?

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy And, what about other so-called "free-market" dictatorships that have not become democratic? Iran would be one. .

This is a joke right? Pro American does not necessarily equal pro free market and pro business.

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy The fact is that there is a general trend in the world toward Democracy throughout the last couple of centuries, and it's not stopping, but I see almost all of the resulting economies also trending toward the practical, with some mix of free markets, regulated markets, and nationalized markets. There just ain't no pure model out there anywhere.

To say that the trend is toward mixed economies is just ludicrous. If you draw a sliding scale from purely socialist to purely capitalist, the trend has been much closer to the capitalist side.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Lebanon is a good example here, right?

And we're not going to deal with examples more than fifty years old, because the Great Depression really screws things up.

When you are talking about trends one counterexample is meaningless. You have to look at the overall picture. Of course there are other factors involved in countries stability and progress but economics is the overwhelming factor.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Spanky
Pro American does not necessarily equal pro free market and pro business.

Please turn in your Republican Party card immediately.

ETA: Commie.

[notcasesensitive]

Originally posted by Spanky
So if you point out a few non free market aspects of these countries that blows my whole theory. Sorry. Doesn't work that way.

When you are talking about trends one counterexample is meaningless. You have to look at the overall picture. Of course there are other factors involved in countries stability and progress but economics is the overwhelming factor.

Flaws in your examples shouldn't be pointed out. Counterexamples carry no weight. You are a big Bush fan, huh?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
So if you point out a few non free market aspects of these countries that blows my whole theory.

If you're arguing that free markets tend to outperform socialist or communist economies over time, I don't think anyone here -- with the possible exception of chickmagnet -- is going to disagree with you.

The interesting thing to me about one of the responses to you this morning was the suggestion that growth in Chile benefited some more than others -- there were winners, but also many losers (to say nothing of the tortured, etc.). If you're only going to assess the performance of an economy by the net output, you're going to miss a whole bunch of aspects of life that many people care about. In democracies, they get to vote.

Although those votes don't matter if we're going to support the violent overthrow of legitimate government to install juntas which will impose free markets.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
See China. "They'll be a democracy one of these days. And it will be the result of their free market policies."

That's the nice thing about a tautology. It's so, well, taut.

Exactly (even though you are being sarcastic).

I don't understand which point you guys are trying to argue against.

Wealthier countrys tend to be stable free market democracies. Ever looked at a scale of affluence, free markets and stable democracies? The richest countrys in the world are almost all democratic and free market (by the way - the way to argue against this point is not to show that one rich country is not democratic - you need to show that the majority of rich countrys are not democratic and not free market).

Growing economies tend to lose their dictators. (Again one or two examples does not disprove the point. You need to show that a significant number of countrys with had growing economies over a signficant period of time did not throw off their dictators). Chile, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore etc.

Free market economies tend to produce the higher growth rates. IN the past fifty years countries with high growth rates. Germany, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Chile, Hong Kong, Taiwan, . Again, in order to argue against this conclusion is not to show that these economies were not totally free or that there is one counter example. You need to show that generally the majority of fast growing economies were government controlled economies.

Highly controlled economies tend to either reduce economic growth or keep a country poor. Examples: Inda, Cuba, Burma, Chile before Pinochet, China before the 1980s, the Entire soviet block, England prior to Margaret Thatcher..............

Which one of these assertions is wrong?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Although those votes don't matter if we're going to support the violent overthrow of legitimate government to install juntas which will impose free markets.

pre-junta Chile had a legitimately elected government?

And didn't we just pick a side? And subjectively, didn't we have to back then? I mean, I know you and Jimmy Carter and them all realized the USSR was benign, but Nixon couldn't see that and he had the keys.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
If you're arguing that free markets tend to outperform socialist or communist economies over time, I don't think anyone here -- with the possible exception of chickmagnet -- is going to disagree with you.

The interesting thing to me about one of the responses to you this morning was the suggestion that growth in Chile benefited some more than others -- there were winners, but also many losers (to say nothing of the tortured, etc.). If you're only going to assess the performance of an economy by the net output, you're going to miss a whole bunch of aspects of life that many people care about. In democracies, they get to vote.

Although those votes don't matter if we're going to support the violent overthrow of legitimate government to install juntas which will impose free markets.

We supported right wing dictators in Taiwan, Chile, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia etc. The bottom fifth of the populaiton is better off in these countrys than almost the entire populations of surrounding countrys. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Burma are by far the poorest countrys in East Asia. South Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam war has almost not grown at all (its per capital income is $390 a year). The same is true of North Korea. Where South Korea, Japan and Germnay all had significant growth rates after they were wiped out by war. If Vietnam had a right wing dictator like South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, after the war, isn't it pretty safe to say that the Vietnamese people would be a lot better off ?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
I don't understand which point you guys are trying to argue against.

Wealthier countrys tend to be stable free market democracies.

OK, but you are confusing causation with correlation. The few counterexamples tend to show as much.

Growing economies tend to lose their dictators. (Again one or two examples does not disprove the point. You need to show that a significant number of countrys with had growing economies over a signficant period of time did not throw off their dictators). Chile, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore etc.

There are plenty of counterexamples here. Russia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Nigeria, Fiji, Peru, e.g.

If you really think Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore are functioning as democracies, then we may be having a problem agreeing upon basic terms.

China has rip-roaring growth and is no democracy. As of now, it disproves your argument.

Free market economies tend to produce the higher growth rates.

OK. That doesn't mean that free-market economies will necessarily be stable, politically.

Highly controlled economies tend to either reduce economic growth or keep a country poor. Examples: Inda, Cuba, Burma, Chile before Pinochet, China before the 1980s, the Entire soviet block, England prior to Margaret Thatcher..............

No one thinks Cuba or Burma is an example of how to manage an economy.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
pre-junta Chile had a legitimately elected government?

Yes. Not even Spanky is disputing Allende's legitimacy. He just seems to think it's OK to overthrow a legitimately elected government to install a junta if that junta is going to manage the economy better.

And didn't we just pick a side? And subjectively, didn't we have to back then? I mean, I know you and Jimmy Carter and them all realized the USSR was benign, but Nixon couldn't see that and he had the keys.

As I noted yesterday, Nixon's National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, observed that Chile was a dagger pointed at the heart of Antartica.

Besides, had we supported Allende, then he would have been our guy, right?

I'm not impressed by the way you guys are conflated Allende's socialism with global communism. I understand that anything to the left of Ohio starts to look the same, but Allende was no Castro.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
We supported right wing dictators in Taiwan, Chile, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia etc. The bottom fifth of the populaiton is better off in these countrys than almost the entire populations of surrounding countrys. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Burma are by far the poorest countrys in East Asia. South Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam war has almost not grown at all (its per capital income is $390 a year). The same is true of North Korea. Where South Korea, Japan and Germnay all had significant growth rates after they were wiped out by war. If Vietnam had a right wing dictator like South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, after the war, isn't it pretty safe to say that the Vietnamese people would be a lot better off ?

You got me there -- how did you know I was really trying to defend Stalinist economies?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by notcasesensitive
Flaws in your examples shouldn't be pointed out. Counterexamples carry no weight. You are a big Bush fan, huh?

So if I say to you that it is generally not in one's personal health interest to shoot bullet into your brain, and someone gives me an example of person that shot a 22 bullet into their brain, survived, and because of the bullet they found a tumour that they would not have discovered otherwise, that would have killed that person in a couple of weeks, and they were saved because of it. Does that example disprove my assertion, does it make my assertion less persuasive? Or should we take all the examples of people who were shot in the head and see what percentage of the people were better off because of the bullet, and then judge my assertion on those statistics?

What do you think?