I'm wondering how equality/fairness works into this. This is the other major attribute that the Washington consensus has undermined, but I can't see how it relates to the stability/flexibility tradeoff (the fact that social equality tends to correlate with stability in Western economies does not mean that this must always be the case).
Also, now that I think about it, I'm not sure that flexibility can always serve as a stand-in for efficiency. Did rail privatization in the UK make rail travel more efficient?
Just some random thoughts... The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman
In short, the UK trains got more efficient for some people. Not the employees nor the clients, possibly... Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
The key point is that even in the cases where it does increase "efficiency", something else goes down - "stability" as I've named it - and the cost of that tradeoff is largely not taken into account.
The fact that the workers used to be using that time for other things - like going for walks in the woods with their families - doesn't count, because they weren't using it to make money. And only the time that is used to make money matters in this ideology.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
