On Jun 22, 2009, at 12:10 PM, Indrajit Gupta wrote:
I would have that by today, nobody remains to subscribe to completely untrammeled Anglo-American capitalism.
Trammeling of Anglo-American capitalism is what led to the current mess. The regulatory capture, corruption, and venal politics that have dominated the Anglo economies for many decades do not usually fall under the rubric of "Anglo-American capitalism".
Much of what constitutes Anglo-American capitalism is a natural consequence of the English Common Law system under which such economies operate. As principles, the sanctity of contract, the assumption of individual sovereignty, and a judicial bias toward equitable outcomes have an undeniably positive track record when it comes to successful economies. If nothing else it greatly reduces business risk due to political whim, which has real financial impact.
It exists in that disastrous form only in a handful of countries. In those, it has been an unmitigated disaster.
I think there are more than a few countries in the world that would benefit mightily from that "unmitigated disaster", particularly when you consider that the economies in most of those countries are far worse off when compared to economies that still have some lingering vestiges of Anglo-American capitalism.
Why do you object to controlled capitalism, Scandinavian capitalism? It's successful, isn't it?
No, there are significant structural problems with Scandinavian-style quasi-capitalist societies of which even many Scandinavians are aware. One of the big ones is that it is difficult to build high-growth ventures in those countries due to the regulatory frameworks. Very small companies are exempted from the regulatory overhead and very large companies can afford the onerous regulatory overhead but in the middle is a wasteland where the imposed overhead is very high but companies are too small to easily absorb those costs while remaining competitive. These types of issues are real problems and attempts at reform generate unintended consequences elsewhere.
Anglo-American capitalism would be a perfectly fine and viable model, were there a country left on earth that actually practiced it.
Cheers, J. Andrew Rogers
