The Gentle Art Of Economics; Otherwise Known As Blowing Smoke

I am becoming more and more convinced that the more academically accomplished someone is the greater the probability that he is a nincompoop.
Continually Mistaken, Chronically Admired: The work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is a study in elite myopia.

In 2006, Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz praised the economic policies of Hugo Chávez. The Venezuelan president ran one of the “leftist governments” in Latin America that were unfairly “castigated for being populist,” Stiglitz wrote in Making Globalization Work, published in September of that year. In fact, the Chávez government aimed “to bring education and health benefits to the poor, and to strive for economic policies that not only bring higher growth but also ensure that the fruits of the growth are more widely shared.” In October 2007, Stiglitz repeated his praise of Chávez at an emerging-markets forum in Caracas, sponsored by the Bank of Venezuela. The nation’s economic growth rate was “very impressive,” he noted, adding that “President Hugo Chávez appears to have had success in bringing health and education to the people in the poor neighborhoods of Caracas.” After the conference, the Nobel laureate and the Venezuelan president had an amicable meeting.

The answer of course is that it is quite easy. And Mr. Stiglitz, if pressed with a pistol to his head would probably admit that Socialism is an impossible economic and social construct, but that it is incumbent upon humanity to find an alternative to free-market economies for the good of the planet...or some such shit.

It's power...over you and me and everyone else who has the temerity to speak up in his own defense and to strive for individual success. How else to explain their hatred of free markets and their crazy, illogical, chaotic gyrations that nonetheless improve the human condition at a fantastic rate.

Consider the vast improvements in quality of life since the French Revolution (which is a convenient historical point for the beginnings of Socialism). How many were as a result of the glories of collectivism and the rejection of the individual as the basic unit of society?*

Go ahead...I'll wait.

*Gulags, gas chambers and reeducation camps excepted.

posted by CBD at 12:15 PM

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