Posted Previously
JK Galbraith Smith vs Darwin
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/12/smith_darwin.html
JK Galbraith: The Predator State: Enron, Tyco, WorldCom... and the U.S. government?
What is the real nature
of American capitalism today? Is it a grand national adventure, as politicians
and textbooks aver, in which markets provide the framework for benign
competition, from which emerges the greatest good for the greatest number? Or
is it the domain of class struggle, even a “global class war,” as the title of
Jeff Faux’s new book would have it, in which the “party of Davos” outmaneuvers
the remnants of the organized working class?
The doctrines of the
“law and economics” movement, now ascendant in our courts, hold that if people
are rational, if markets can be “contested,” if memory is good and information
adequate, then firms will adhere on their own to norms of honorable conduct.
Any public presence in the economy undermines this. Even insurance—whether
deposit insurance or Social Security—is perverse, for it encourages
irresponsible risktaking. Banks will lend to bad clients, workers will “live
for today,” companies will speculate with their pension funds; the movement has
even argued that seat belts foster reckless driving. Insurance, in other words,
creates a “moral hazard” for which “market discipline” is the cure; all works
for the best when thought and planning do not interfere. It’s a strange vision, and if we weren’t
governed by people like John Roberts and Sam Alito, who pretend to believe it,
it would scarcely be worth our attention.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2006/05/predator_state.html
Now, an
introduction and another article, for your review…
Blue bolded highlights
below are the author’s, an energy banker based in Paris. - kwc
Why Americans should
reject U.S. market capitalism
by
Jerome a Paris, Sat Apr 29th, 2006 at
09:20:11 AM EST
William Pfaff has a
great article today, with the explicit title of
"Why Europe should reject U.S. market capitalism" which I recommend
that you read in full.
He reminds us that
the current market ideology is just that, an ideology, and that it is thus a political choice, that has nothing inevitable about it
and can be reversed. He traces its origins to the combined influence of Milton
Friedman (monetarism), Van Hayek (rejection of totalitarism, associated with
socialism and too powerful States) and Ayn Rand (the selfishness of superior
people against the mob and the weak is a good thing).
This is what underlay the transformation of American corporate culture,
and of the American business corporation from an institution with national
identity, constrained to reconcile interests of owners, employees and
community, into the modern global corporation, effectively controlled by its
managers and mandated to the single objective of producing "value"
for stockholders, while handsomely rewarded its executives.
This change transformed labor into an anonymous
commodity and put
both blue-collar and white-collar staff into competition with an effectively
unlimited global labor supply, resulting in employment
insecurity, reduced or static wages, diminished or eliminated benefits and
pensions, and the destructive social pressures of falling living standards.
In the United States, the new model of corporate business has evolved
toward a form of crony capitalism, in which business and
government interests are often corruptly intermingled, the system resistant to reform because of the financial
dependence of both major political parties on contributed money.
As I said, read it
all. My only quibble is with the title of the article. I have used my proposal
for an amended title as the title for this post...
http://www.boomantribune.com/
Here is the
referenced article. This author is a “globally respected
political commentator and author on international relations, contemporary
history and U.S. policy. He is published in five countries and his column is
syndicated by Tribune Media Services” and the author of 8 books on
international relations.
Why
Europe should reject U.S. market capitalism
William
Pfaff, TMSI, SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 2006
PARIS
- The specter of Anglo-American market capitalism dominated France's student
unrest in March and April, and motivated popular rejection in France a year ago
of the proposed new European Union constitution.
The election that has just given Italy a fragile center-
left coalition, and recent conflict in German industry, involved the same
question: how to remodel national economies, or whether to remodel them at all.
Advocates of the new model capitalism, and the
globalization project that goes with it, like to present it as an _expression_ of
historical necessity, rooted in classical economics and embodying irrefutable
laws. It is progress itself, they say. Those who do not conform to the rules of
modern market capitalism, and do not offer the human sacrifices of lost
employment and diminished living standards that the market demands, will fall
by the wayside of history.
This is simply untrue, although most of those who say it
undoubtedly believe it.
The new American and British market capitalist model,
which dictated deregulation of industry and privatization of state enterprises
in the 1970s, and globalization of international markets in the 1990s, exists
as a result of free political decisions and ideological choices that were
anything but inevitable. History may one day describe them as having been
perverse and socially destructive.
Two
of the most important influences on the new capitalism were academic in origin,
and the third, improbably, was an instance of romanticized egoism.
The first influence was monetarist economic theory. This
in principle excluded social considerations from economic policy decision.
Government economic policy was to be made chiefly in response to a single
objectively determinable factor, the money supply. The effect of this new theory
was to "dehumanize" economic policy, previously held to be closely
related to political considerations, as was the case with the Keynesian
tradition that monetarism challenged.
The
second influence was primarily political, a reaction to 20th-century totalitarianism. Working in
London in the 1930s, the Austrian political theorist and economist Friedrich
von Hayek began as a critic of Keynes, but eventually widened his argument so
as to assert as a matter of principle that state intervention in society, even
in democratic political systems, amounted to a "Road to Serfdom" (the
title of a book he published in 1944).
State intervention in economy and society threatened human
liberty. The free market produced economic efficiency and human freedom. Hayek
had a great influence on Margaret Thatcher.
The third influence was an eccentric one, important in the
United States. It was the creation by a Russian-American novelist, Ayn Rand, of a
"philosophy" of heroic egoism and pursuit of individual self-interest
(against the mob and the weak) by superior persons. Her ideas responded to the longings of
impressionable college students (including Alan Greenspan) and her views became
something of a mid-century American cult, if not a sect.
This is what underlay the transformation of American
corporate culture, and of the American business corporation from an institution
with national identity, constrained to reconcile interests of owners, employees
and community, into the modern global corporation, effectively controlled by
its managers and mandated to the single objective of producing
"value" for stockholders, while handsomely rewarded its executives.
This change transformed labor into an anonymous commodity
and put both blue-collar and white-collar staff into competition with an
effectively unlimited global labor supply, resulting in employment insecurity,
reduced or static wages, diminished or eliminated benefits and pensions, and
the destructive social pressures of falling living standards.
In the United States, the new model of corporate business
has evolved toward a form of crony capitalism, in which business and government
interests are often corruptly intermingled, the system resistant to reform
because of the financial dependence of both major political parties on
contributed money.
Frequently described by its supporters as a progressive
step in the development of a new international economy, the political-economic
system that has evolved in the United States has proved regressive in crucial
respects, as well as inefficient and abusive of the public
interest.
Europe, one would think, should be looking for social and
economic evolution on its own terms. It is perfectly capable of doing so, as a
modern industrial society that in aggregate terms is larger and wealthier than
the United States, as well as less shackled by obsolescent ideology and
entrenched special interests - its problems with union corporatism
notwithstanding.
In the longer term, for Europeans to embark on this
project, instead of conforming to the currently received wisdom concerning the
globalized economy, would serve the international interest as well as that of
the European Union. It might even prove a service to the United States, whose
future is now jeopardized by economic error and excess, as well as unachievable
global political and military ambitions.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/28/opinion/edpfaff.php
More on William
Pfaff @ TMSI http://www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/byline.jsp?custid=67&bylineid=160
