Re: charlatanism
- Original Message - From: fabio guillermo rojas [EMAIL PROTECTED] Example from my professional life: As is probably obvious, I'm not an economist - I'm a sociologist who takes economics very seriously and I sometimes use economic tools in my research. So I'm always in a position of explaining economic ideas to non-economists and I frequently find that people tend to avoid economic issues. Rodney Stark and some other sociologists have very fruitfully used supply and demand for public goods to explain the rise and fall of religious bodies. They also discuss religious entrepreneurship and the attempt to impose religious monopolies or religious cartels to fend off competition. This school has also explained the secularization of western Europe as a supply side failure. Within this genre, I regard Stark and Bainbridge's _The Future of Religion_ as a latter day classic. Since many sociologists seem to have an aversion to both religion and economics, I wonder whether their studies have adversely affected their professional reputations. (Also, I regard Stark's textbook _Sociology_ as the only introductory sociology textbook so interesting it can be read for pleasure, but I don't think it is in print anymore.) ~Alypius Skinner
Re: Nations as Corporations
- Original Message - From: Wei Dai [EMAIL PROTECTED] One factor that keeps large corporations honest is the threats of hostile takeovers and bankruptcy. Unfortunately neither of these seem likely to apply to a large nation-as-corporation. Imagine creditors trying to force everyone else to leave the U.S. after a bankruptcy because they now own all of the shares. What if a foreign power began buying up large numbers of shares and assigning them to its foreign agents? How many shares would Al Qua'ida buy? Other questions/observations I have: will shareholders receive dividends? Would immigration's effect on dividend size affect shareholders' demand for one immigration policy or another? If the government refused to issue more shares, but simply bought one back on the open market to issue to each new child and charge the parents's for the cost, this would be an interesting way to stabilize population. Would it make more sense to organize a nation like a not-for-profit corporation? Since the modern state is often regarded as already being organized like a corporation, I assume this thread is about organizing the literal nation itself as a corporation. Does this not mean an internal labor market in which the managers would be responsible for training, job assignments, and promotions (and wages and salaries), so that involuntary unemployment and welfare schemes would be non-existent? Would social security and medicare be run like a pension system? But what would they be invested in? With the nation (not just the state) as corporation, there presumably would not be any use for a stock market, so pensions would have to be funded entirely out of corporate (national) profits. If the whole apparatus of state were so funded, there really would be no need for taxes per se. (Perhaps this thread should be nation as conglomerate.) Would corporate divisions or subsidiairies compete against each other or receive protected territories? Could the corporation hire employees who were not shareholders? Could one become a shareholder without moving here? What if most of our shareholders eventually lived overseas, while our residents were mostly employees? If only shareholders may be employees, and foreigners may not own shares, does that mean no overseas employees permitted unless they are shareholders stationed abroad? The nation could not be a multinational corporation? Would a social stigma to selling one's share evolve? In one survey, 25% of US respondents said they would change their religion for 2 million dollars, but only 16% would give up their US citizenship for the same sum. Go figure. How would we preserve an independent judiciary (essentially an arbitration system)--although that is a challenge under any system? The US judiciary already seems to be increasingly politicized. Would the only restraint on our CEO be contractual agreements and decisions by the Board of Directors? If so, we would not need a legislature anymore. New laws-regulations could be drafted by legal experts as the CEO directed. John Hull wrote: 1. The program will prevent poor from coming to the States. I think that's wrong, but I respect your view if you feel otherwise. So you think its wrong to demand that poor people respect private property rights (since the corporate-nation would be the private property of the shareholders). But if you want to forcibly confiscate a share or two from Berkshire-Hathaway and donate it to me (since I can't afford to buy them), I won't complain very loudly :) Seriously though, if no limitations are placed on immigration, the effects would likely be unpleasant for many of the people who already live here and do, in fact, think of themselves sort of as shareholders (citizens) of the nation. (In olden times, the kingdom was viewed as a sole proprietorship owned by the king and national identity was weak or non-existent. Soldiers were mercenairies beholden only to their employer, not to the people. Multicultural states were much more stable under sole proprietorship-monarchies than under conditions of republican nationalism.) Do you mean that you want to benefit a select few of the foreign poor at the cost of depressing wages and opportuny for the native poor of your own country and raising the net cost of public services (according to labor economists), or do you mean that you want mutually open borders as a matter of principle? In either case, what effect will this have on the native lower classes' sense of belongingness, national loyalty, willingness to make sacrifices and avoid free-riding, etc.? Does the logic here not ultimately lead to an every-man-for-himself mentality that ultimately shifts loyalty from the nation-state to the family with whatever repercussions that may have for political stability? Now, I will readily agree that the concept of transferable national shares may well have the effect of eroding social capital, but so does your view that foreign
China Will Soon Be Second Only To The US
Title: China Will Soon Be Second Only To The US http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2002/08/02/200208020048.asp China Will Soon Be Second Only To The USThe Korea Herald8-4-2 Over the coming decades, China will become a thoroughly new form of political and economic entity. Brutally competitive in both politics and world markets, innovative and resilient, China will be more dominant than any nation save America. Such a shift in the global balance of power occurs only about once every century and is comparable to the emergence of the U.S. power a century ago. The magnitude of this change is due, in part, to a radical and rapid shift in China's governance. Because of its suddenness, it is tempting to write this shift off as a fluke. But China's restructuring is permanent and will affect every aspect of its national life, as well as its global standing. The People's Republic now embodies two systems: the centralized, autocratic Communist administration, dominated by an outdated ideology and military interests, and the decentralized free-market economic regime. Whether deliberately or not, China is reorganizing itself to balance central authority and common purpose with decentralized freedom, in the same way that nimble companies balance home-office and divisional control. The result is an entirely new geopolitical model - the country as corporation. Call the new China "Chung-hua, Inc." (Chunghua translates as "China" and actually means "the prosperous center of the universe.") Like many corporations, China is moving most decision-making to the "business unit" level - semi-autonomous, self-governing economic region-states that compete fiercely against each other for capital, technology, and human resources (just as America's states do). This new, decentralized free-market regime currently encompasses only a small part of China's vast territory, and many Chinese officials still refuse to acknowledge its existence. Indeed, only seven years ago, the word "federation" was banned from the Chinese language; companies like Federal Transport or Federation Merchants were required to change their names. Today, China has the most federal governance structure of any large nation except the United States. Two broad categories of region-states exist. The first are relatively small, composed of cities and their surrounding areas, generally with a population of 5-7 million people. Some of these - Shenzhen, Shanghai, Dalian, Tianjin, Shenyang, Xiamen, Qingdao, and Suzhou - are now growing economically at a rate of 15-20 percent per year - faster than such Asian "tigers" as Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand and Korea ever did. These smaller region-states, in turn, are propelling the growth of larger mega-regions, with populations approaching 100 million each. The mega-regions, which tend to share common dialects, ethnic identities, and histories, are becoming economic powerhouses in their own right. If they were separate nations, five of them - the Yangtze Delta, the Northeastern Tristates area (formerly known as Manchuria), the Pearl River Delta, the Beijing-Tianjin corridor, and Shandong - would rank among Asia's 10 largest economies. Regional governments have also been toughened up by the Chung-hua, Inc. ethic. Most officials are appointed, not elected. Not only are they held to targets of 7-percent annual economic growth or better (like many corporate executives), they must also improve environmental quality, build better infrastructure, and reduce local crime levels. In October 2001, a half-dozen bureaucrats were expelled from one of China's major cities for not meeting their economic growth and security targets. Local officials are often considered heroes, not oppressors. In January 2001, Bo Xhi Lai, then mayor of Dalian, was promoted to governor of Liaoning province. Thousands of women, many in tears, spontaneously came to a park to bid him farewell. During his nine-year tenure, Dalian evolved from a ramshackle port into one of the cleanest and most prosperous cities in Asia. It now has a street life more vibrant than Singapore, a layout
Re: Nations as Corporations
--- Alypius Skinner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 'John Hull wrote: 1. The program will prevent poor from coming to the States. I think that's wrong' So you think its wrong to demand that poor people respect private property rights That's a bit of a non sequitur. :) Nope. All I was saying is that poor shouldn't be prevented from immigrating simply for being poor (and that the proposed citizenship structure would do that, a view that has been well challenged). Furthermore, that people should be allowed to move from country to country fairly unhindered--taking the fleas with the dog. No insightful economic arguments here, it's just a value that I have (and interjected). Alypius Skinner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ken Lay, Bill Clinton (Hillary in 2008), what's the difference? Lay might even be an improvement. Hillary in 2008? Ooof. Humor aside, I'm not sure I agree that Lay-esque leadership would be an improvement. You remark how stupid and apathetic voters are, it seems to me that in that environment someone more clever than I could come up with a scheme to build stock prices in the short-run, get paid, and bail out of office. The world has certainly seen its share of bad leaders, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't be worse. I think that the proposed scheme would shorten political time horizons by linking reward to a very short-term phenomenon, and thereby produce even greater incentives for bone-head moves. I feel that if leaders' primary compensation comes in the form of going down in the history books in a good light, then they'll be more inclined to think in the longer term. Obviously, I don't have a general argument to back this up. It is also obvious that one could easily pick out plenty of counter examples, which I could not counter with counter examples because we're dealing with a hypothetical. I would like to hear an argument as to why linking reward to an extremely short-term phenomenon would produce better leaders on average. I'm not throwing down the gauntlet...it's just something I'd like to hear. --- Alypius Skinner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But all the incentives for that scenario (embracing mercantile excesses) already exist. That must be true to some degree since people keep putting Pat Buchanan on TV. But I submit that those incentives arise from your aforementioned voter ignorance stupidity: some people support schemes that are ultimately harmful for the nation the world and will vote for the slobs who enact such policies. The proposed scheme, IMO, creates an *institutional* incentive for such mercantilist policies because they can, at least in the short-run, hurt the rest of the world alot more than they will hurt us. Thanks for reading my stuff, jsh = ...for no one admits that he incurs an obligation to another merely because that other has done him no wrong. -Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Discourse 16. __ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com
