I agree with futures shark, basically "free marketers" in south america historically have been a bunch of crooks trying to get a license to financially rape the population, and then using their political clout to get bailouts from the government when the market punishes them for their ineptitude as businessmen. Imagine a country with lots of Ken Lays and Bernie Ebbers's, that's the typical South American country. The difference is, businessmen NEVER get punished for scamming customers or investors. Add to that HUGE artificial barriers to entry and it's easy to understand why business in South America is anything but competitive. Not all businessmen are crooks, but, South American taxes and regulations are so stupid, few businessmen can survive without playing along with the system, in other words, bribing, lobbying, bullying and screwing others if they can get away with it. So the average Joe, or should I say the "average Juan", thinks free markets means crooks running the show, so he perceives left leaning politicians as morally superior, "nationalistic and without hidden interests". Socialists market themselves that way with success, which is kind of funny, since more than often they have their own dirt, and very rarely have any real world knowledge or experience, since they are either professional politicians or academics. In other words "professional parasites". So voters naturally fluctuate from one side to the other. Get sick of one side, go to the other side. Repeat forever. So in my opinion, to establish truly "free competitive markets" in 3rd world countries is not just privatize and deregulate as many naive gurus and academics think. Going there from the current situation leads only to Kleptocracies. What to do, then? I don't know that's not my job. All I know, south american bonds and equities have been going up, but nothing has really changed, so I'm looking to short the hell out of those POS.
The heritage foundation number is 2003 data in constant 2000 US dollars. The CIA number is an estimate for 2005. Although Nationmaster.com uses multiple sources for the information on their website, the link I posted for GDP per capita was using data from the world bank for 2004. Oh the irony! So you take numbers provided by an internatinal governmental bureaucracy (the world bank) over numbers provided by a private unregulated business (the Heritage/WSJ). BTW the Heritage Foundation numbers are consistent for all countries involved (2003 data in constant 2000 US dollars) so the comparison of Argentina with Chile or Panama was absolutely valid. How is government corruption a free-market failure? Free market politicians together with free market businessmen campaign on the free-market economic miracle platform, they get elected, they become corrupt, the free market reforms fail to produce results. Well, in all fairness they produce excellent results for free market politicians and big business, exactly as expected by critics. The reforms fail for the rest of the country and free marketeers blame the government ignoring the fact that it actually consisted of free-market politicians. All I ask for is one specific example of how a free-market system has failed Esignal buying QCharts. What, did you really think they wanted to compete, improve services and lower prices? Get real and get ready to pay up, they found a better way to increase their profits. SO the actual change was from a public monopoly to a private monopoly and hence no benefit. Bingo, that's exactly the point, the entire free market theory is a fantasy and it always ends up exactly like that. Why do you think anti-trust laws were created to begin with, because entire industries were monopolized Yes the internet was originally created as a defense department project some time in the '60's I believe. But todays internet is privately owned and the success of it has come from free enterprise not government involvement. Excellent, so there is a role for both, isn't there? Free-market behavior is natural and people engaged in it every day. Promoting government control That's a strawman argument, no one is promoting government control over every transaction, government control is applicable only in certain very specific situations when it's important for the public good and when markets for whatever reason fail.
doodoo, your arguments are getting more ridiculous by the day, and have finally arrived at complete works of fiction existing only in your own mind. What exactly is the point you are trying to make?
I did not realize that China's economic success achieved without free market policies and failure of South american free-market politicians and businessmen to successufully implement free market reforms in South America are fiction existing only in my own mind. Thank's for telling me.
Everyone else on this thread seems to believe that China's economic success IS due to free-enterprise and that the SA policies failed because they were big government SOLD as free-market reform. Yet you keep saying the opposite without providing any LOGICAL backing to your arguments. The latest batch were truly ridiculous.
The free market is not a panacea, it will not make everyone better off, it will not even make most people better off and, left on its own, develops significant flaws. It's at those points where government intervention is necessary.
China's success is certainly due to liberalization of economic policies, opening up to foreign trade and investement, privatisation, introduction of capitalism and private property, smart government policies etc but it has nothing to do with the free market. The free market principle is based on the idea of absolute economic freedom which according to the Heritage foundation's rating China does not have, it does not even come close.
When I think of the free market I equate it with individual freedom. Parties only enter into transactions that are mutually beneficial. When I think of government intervention, I think of rules & restriction being made that usually are only window dressing, have unintended consequences, and take freedom away from the individual. When I look at the two options I believe it is better to be free to make your own decisions rather than having someone tell you what you can do. And in the real world that we live in it seems to me that government monopolies and highly regulated industry is less efficient than other industry that has relatively little regulation. Anyway, That where I'm coming from and honestly I don't see how anyone could be so vehemently opposed to the free market as you seem to be.
Your looking at this as an all or nothing proposal while I'm saying that on a scale from 100% free-market to 100% command control, the operations on the freemarket end of the scale are more efficient than the government end.
While you're advocating a 100% free market approach I have never advocated command economy or socialism, as a matter of fact I repeatedly denounced them while maintaining that some government intervention in certain situations may be beneficial for the economy. So who is an "all or nothing" extremist?