tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3471471289744825428.post6207021926035789151..comments2024-03-11T00:31:41.186-07:00Comments on The Oregon Economics Blog: Economist's Notebook: Is Neoliberalism Dead?Patrick Emersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17242234148546323374noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3471471289744825428.post-32757580657829689502008-08-21T19:27:00.000-07:002008-08-21T19:27:00.000-07:00This is a good, if slippery, question. It is a goo...This is a good, if slippery, question. It is a good question because it cuts to the core issues: more or less government regulation/intervention and what kinds of regulations and interventions. It is a slippery question because “neoliberal” is a slippery, not well defined, term. Often policies, or effects of policies, are call “neoliberal” when they are not: free market rhetoric is concealing government intervention on behalf of the powerful. And even most neoliberals would admit, I think, that free markets need rules, aka regulation. The issues become what rules are best or fair and who should make them.<BR/><BR/>Another way of posing this issue is to ask “What should be the rules of globalization?”<BR/><BR/>My thoughts:<BR/><BR/>(1) Markets do need rules. International markets need international rules. Much of the perceived failure of neoliberal economics is that we have reached the limits of what the current international political institutions can deliver in terms of global economic rules. New political institutions are needed. New issues need to be addressed (global warming) and new participants need to be part of the rule making process (China, India, Brazil, etc).<BR/><BR/>(2) Powerful economic interests manipulate political institutions, both domestic and global, to get what they want. Many of Joseph Stiglitz’s criticisms, for example, are cases of free-market rhetoric covering government intervention on behalf of the politically powerful. So what may start out as an economic question can become a political question: how does the globe, or a nation, maintain political institutions that are fair, that do not favor the powerful?<BR/><BR/>(3) Free trade is good in theory, and in practice globally has produced remarkable global growth, bringing billions out of poverty. But in practice it also suffers greatly from the manipulation of powerful economic interests. A trade agreement that may sound good in general is often loaded with so many special interest provisions as to make it far from “free” or “fair.”<BR/><BR/>(4) Change produces discontent. Across the global, new economic opportunities are opening up. Not everyone is happy even as they become richer. Being uprooted from culture and tradition creates blowback. Many become confused about what they really want or what the choices are before them. Not everyone understands economic, especially international trade issues.<BR/><BR/>(5) Free markets and democracy do not need to go hand-in-hand (think China). This gets at the issue of who makes the market rules. Much of the 21st century will be spent figuring out what mixtures of free markets (how free and what rules) and democracy (how democratic or who makes the rules) work best. The track record of the US so far this century in not dealing with our big issues does not argue well for our particular set of political institutions.Dave Porterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07975172999548547482noreply@blogger.com