Hi Rog, and other interested
R:
...
Rule-of-law. Property rights. Accounting standards. Constitutional
liberties. Investment mechanisms. Warranties. Copywrite and patent laws,
etc. These can be centralized or decentralized in nature (ie not just
governmental)
I believe that these systems of support are themselves measures of knowledge
for a society, as are infrastructure, roads and airports, private
distribution networks, thriving economic interests, environmental
organizations, etc. In other words, I would extend the knowledge metaphor to
Patterns of Knowledge that extends out to all successful abilities of a
society to influence reality. (I am basically substituting POV's with
OK's -- Patterns of KNOWLEDGE)
...
The way to help those that have not developed effective economies is to
export the knowledge. This uses my very inclusive above definition of the
word. It not only includes education, science, inventions and copywrite
data, it also includes accounting standards, investment processes, more's on
birth control, etc. By the way, exporting knowledge (thus reducing
assymetry) will imo increase wealth for ALL parties.
M:
Indeed, and again I'm glad to see your great focus on positive sum games.
But on the other hand we have that this "Knowledge Export" is just imposing
a system. If we take a look on modern wars we easily will see that they have
not the purpose to conquer a territory, rather to export, often impose, a
system. Even if this is a step ahead if confronted with a classical
"Napoleonic" war of conquest, I think we are far from an effective asymmetry
reduction.
After WWII, the Marshall Plan has been effective in West Europe as primarily
we already had a strong and diffused culture of the individual rights and so
on, so we were able to "influence reality" (in the past I used the statement
"to tame the beast", where the beast is the market, the social Giant). So
there was not great asymmetry. But towards those country much less developed
in "market culture", in order to effectively reduce asymmetry, I have
scarce faith in governmental centralized plans and even less in private
initiatives. The former usually trigger corruption and waste of resources,
the latter usually trigger sterile exploitation of the weaker market (what
about Argentina?) and *increase* asymmetry.
Instead, I greatly admire the Muhammad Yunus' micro-credit system (many
links are available on the net) which has demonstrated more effectiveness
than any other majestic attempt. IMO it works as it is made of small
interventions focused on single persons or small groups, and it shows that
actually the only possibility to tame the (social) beast [be it governmental
or not], the real asymmetry we have to solve is about the individual
(intellectual) freedom. The micro-credit system triggers primarily personal
attachment to small individual enterprises, creates a real local market that
is the basic weave upon which individual's awareness of needs and skills and
possibility of Quality Creation thrives. And this is DQ at work, my friends!
Ciao,
Marco
p.s.
M (previous):
By the way, one of those economists, Joseph Stiglitz, apparently has been
forced to resign from the IMF for his ideas.....
R:
Really? Hmmmm. He was a Clinton appointee who I hear strongly recommended
centralized solutions to info assymetry.
M:
I had to recover the article to be sure of what I read (please note it is
NOT at all a leftist magazine! The owner is -spit!- Berlusconi) Actually I
did not remember properly: according to that article, he has been forced to
resign from the World Bank after his strong criticism on the IMF politics.
And about his job for Bill Clinton, I also read he had problems with Rubin,
so now he is back to university. Actually, some no-global organization have
borrowed many of his ideas, so it was to say the least embarassing for the
World Bank to have him inside.... I also read that the Nobel Academy
decision has been by many interpreted a crystal clear polemic against the
politics of IMF, World Bank and the rest of the gang... American
administration included.
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