Jim Devine asked: >right, but should the UN encourage this trend?
Any suggestions which trend or which mode of accumulation the UN should encourage in LDCs? Mixed economy combined with cooperatives, publicly controlled corporations, and half-autonomous institutions in the form of a Greater Mumbai Enterprise Board? "A somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment will prove the only means of securing an approximation to full employment; though this need not exclude all manner of compromises and of devices by which public authority will co-operate with private initiative." This proposal was submitted to advanced economies. Does it also apply for emerging economies? Or do you prefer a path of development as proposed by Austin & Suguhira: "The prevailing view of industrialization has focussed on technology, capital, entrepreneurship and the institutions that enabled them to be deployed. Labour was often equated with other factors of production, and assigned a relatively passive role. Yet it was labour absorption and the improvement of the quality of labour over the course of several centuries that underscored the timing, pace and quality of global industrialization. While science and technology developed in the West and whereas the use of fossil fuels, especially coal and oil, were vital to this process, the more recent history has been underpinned by the development of comparatively resource- and energy-saving technology, without which the diffusion of industrialization would not have been possible. The labour-intensive, resource-saving path, which emerged in East Asia under the influence of Western technology and institutions, and is diffusing across the world, suggests the most realistic route humans could take for a further diffusion of industrialization, which might respond to the rising expectations of living standards without catastrophic environmental degradation." ( Austin, Gareth; Sugihara, Kaoru: Labour-intensive industrialization in global history http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415455527/ ) Sugihara's conclusion: www.cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/edit/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Sugihara_WP_Web_081018.pdf "The connection between labour-intensive industrialisation and demographic patterns, which had been taken up in the proto-industry literature but not fully developed with regard to the diffusion of industrialisation, must be explored further. An implication of this paper is that we need to discuss the possibility that the employment opportunities created by labour-intensive industrialisation encouraged population growth in a major way. Not only did this stimulus release severe resource constraints arising from the shortage of land, but it supported a slow but steady rise of labour productivity in agriculture by offering additional work opportunities in the countryside and beyond. Improved agriculture in turn fed more people. This familiar linkage must be applied not only to the country-level analysis but to the understanding of economic development at regional and global levels, since international trade, migration and the flows of capital increasingly helped the more efficient global resource utilisation during the last two centuries. In so far as labour-intensive industrialisation embraced the gradual improvement of the quality of labour, this was the main route by which mankind escaped the Malthusian trap of overpopulation and the Ricardian trap of rising food prices. In the end, it was this virtuous circle, not the sudden availability of vast resources in the New World, that sustained the global diffusion of industrialisation." hk At 15:36 10.12.2012, Jim Devine wrote: >right, but should the UN encourage this trend? > >On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 10:10 PM, Anthony D'Costa ><[email protected]> wrote: >>Use of K intensive technology is a capitalist imperative, if >>businesses want to remain somewhere near the tech frontier and >>compete with other big firms from elsewhere in an international >>market. This kind of production regime fulfills at least two >>conditions, catering to middle class demand, that is growing and >>meeting international quality standards. In and of themselves this >>is not a bad thing (after all these technologies allow economies of >>scale) and firm competitiveness. Think of Mao's backyard steel >>mills versus the Korea's POSCO. Where the difficulty is growing >>employment in these sectors in the absence of a dynamic growing >>formal sector from the unorganized sector. Surely aggregate demand >>(lack thereof) must have some role to play not to mention the >>complexities of an underdeveloped agricultural sector. >> Anthony D'Costa > > >me: >>I remember taking a graduate-level economic development course >>(with Charles Blitzer, I believe) in which the reading, including >>an article by Amartya Sen and a book by the UN on project >>evaluation, seemed to encourage the use of capital-intensive >>technologies despite low wages and unemployed labor. (I think it's >>the UN International Development Organization.) > >-- >Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your >own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
