I guess everyone knows what the both things mean. I just want to have your opinion. I’ve made my exprience with planned economy, because of living in the the Sowiet Union and now I live in a social democratic country, but it’s hard to say what kind of economy is better. The liberalism which is being developed from the theory of Adam smith or Planned economy, like the communists in Russia set the system.
I’ve been thinking about it recently and I can’t come to any useful conclusion. Just can’t make up my mind, what I would prefer, because each of the systems has both sides.
It would be nice if you shared with me your opinion and expiriences.
I am a new member from Galicia–>Spain–>Europe, so please excuse my bad english.
I think that the issue is old-fashioned. The classic liberalism (A.Smith style), had its opportunity in the past, but it did not work. After WWII the bet was the social democracy at Keynes style (like in Alemania). By the other hand, the communist planned economy didn´t work: actually just Cuba is the unique country with something similar (in China the only thing that lefts from communism is the authoritarism).
So, wealth-fare state was the model to follow after WWII for most countries in Europe, but now it seems to get its end. A good example is Germany, that is going on “cuts” on their social assistance. The wealth-fare state it is too big to deal with this globalized and changing enviroment. In my opinion the question is ¿Which must be the new state model? And the answer is not liberalism, but also it is not a communist model.
In my opinion both models are old-fashioned, and we must see other alternatives from the neo-liberalists ( Berlin, Hayek ), funcionalists (Luhman), and also revisionists (neo-marxists) writters.
Personally I think that heavily regulated capitalism with dramatically increased shareholder rights is the way to go. Hopefully if most workers have a say in the running of the company fat cats will be cut down to size and more social responsibility will be taken.
A true liberal (laissez-faire) economy is the way to go because whether or not it “works” the best (which I believe it would if it were allowed to be practiced), it is the only moral system, and what’s right is more important than what works.
Well, in my opinion … especially according to Cuba … communism helped them to rise in the hierarchy kinda. But Fidel Castro has just spoilted it and acted only for his own profit.
Ernesto Guevara had completely different ideas of how it should be.
But still, we have a kind of neo-liberalism here and still a high number of unemployed people … it’s a crisis!
I believe it does “not work” ¿Why? becuase of what is know as externalities problem in economy: Barriers To Entry, Lack Of Information, Very Large Economies of Scale, Too high Transition Costs etc etc There is no an “invisible hand”.
Just another think. ¿Why do you say that is th only moral system? I do not agree… morality is something subjective. Also, could an non-equality system be moral??? laissez-faire means absolute freedom (for example, freedom to have a lot of possesions) and this means no equality. Communist systems are the other side of the coin, they mean equality, but it also means no freedom.
In my opinion yhis is all: Freedom VS Equality. A kind of dialectic fight that have lead to all state organizations forms. The perfect model will achive both.
I Hope my english would be good enough to expres myself, if not sorry
I think something often overlooked when percieving the failures of a government or economy are the oppositions. I often think of the cold war, the US versus the USSR. Both had ideas on how the economy and government should intertwine. Both sides fought tirelessly to ensure prosperity regardless of right and wrong. In the end one side must win and one side must loose. Such was the case that the USSR end up not being the victor, however. I think the loss of the “cold war” is often used interchangably with the failure of a type of government or economics. Without the US waging economic, political, social War on the Soviet ideal, would it have failed? In the end it is always percieved that human greed and the corruptive power of absolute power are the culprits. We need not look any further then the current state of affairs in the US to see what happens when human greed is allowed to flourish. Both sides have flaws, i see problems with the US and USSR ideals throughout the cold war,
Kurt, when you say a laissez-faire economy do you mean anarcho-capitalism or a libertarian state? If the second, do you mean a genuinely laissez-faire economy (i.e. one in which workers were allowed to unionise, strike etc. and could balance the power of companies) or the usual meaning, an economy in which the balance of power is heavily weghted towards the employer? Just curious.
As for morality… if morality is entirely subjective then the only moral system is anarchy, since people could form communes with like-minded friends and enact whatever social structure they wanted. This is not what I believe myself, at least most of the time, because I don’t believe it would work that way in practice.
I guess he means laissez-faire as liberalism.
In my opinion it hasn’t worked either. If we just consider it’s modell, we will detect that this freedom helps to build cartels which grow over into monopolies.
If you remember the years between 1925 and 1930… Laissez-faire has more disadvantages, than you suppose. In the USA there were enough economical items, but only a minority of the population could afford it to buy something. Later it caused an inflation.
A communist system could definitely work, if you first had a populace with communist values. You just can’t impose it from the top-down, like the Soviets tried to do (not that Soviet communism was really communism-- more like an exploitative oligarchy masquerading as communism).
It could have worked, but the people are not developed enough to take it and to accept this order. But in the Soviet Union it was more dictatorship than oligarchy!
