On Jun 22, 2009, at 9:09 PM, Pranesh Prakash wrote:
On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 01:34, J. Andrew Rogers
<[email protected]> wrote:
Anglo-American capitalism would be a perfectly fine and viable
model, were
there a country left on earth that actually practiced it.
Haha. I agree. But the same could be said about anarchism and about
communism as well! And while we're at it, why leave out
libertarianism? The defender of each believes it to be a perfectly
fine and viable model, if only countries practised it well /or if only
there were countries left to practise it. Indeed, between viability
and practice is etched the bright line between idealism and watching
perfect ideologies and political philosophies crumble.
Heh. I primarily meant it in the sense that individual sovereignty and
Enlightenment principles have been waning in important ways, at least
in the western industrialized countries. The Common Law is still
around for the most part. The Anglo countries (US excepted) currently
spend about half of their GDP on government programs, even more than
many unambiguously "socialist" countries. They may be capitalist in
theory, but there is not much capital left to put it into practice.
To my mind, "Anglo-American capitalism" is not rigidly defined
economic model but a portmanteau for the kinds of economic models that
emerge in a society that has embraced the principles of the
Enlightenment in the context of the English Common Law system as a
legal foundation. It is obviously possible to have one to the
exclusion of the other, with results that can diverge significantly
from anything I would view as a canonical model of Anglo-American
capitalism.
Cheers,
J. Andrew Rogers
