You seem to be conflating economic planning with a command economy
Not at all - but certainly that is the image conjured up by neolib parallels drawn with the Soviet Union. We are talking here of regulation which comes somewhere between planning and command.
But you ignore my central point - the the ideology of state planning provides no frame of reference for measuring the quality and value added of regulation and for differentiating between good and bad, and for providing citizens with the tools to reinforce the good and reduce the bad. You are expecting people to buy into the state regulation ideology en block and on trust - and not providing the evidence of what is working well and what is not, and what mechanisms are provided to ensure a move from bad to better. The state will always be on the defensive without such detailed democratic accountability, because the neolibs can always point out that the markets ensure bad capitalists (sometimes) fail. You can't give Governments a blank cheque - and that is essentially what the state regulation ideology is looking for - "were disinterested experts, trust us" doesn't cut it any more. "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
Suppose the government has a plan. what tools are they allowed to deploy to attain the plan's goals? When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
The Government planners otoh have been lousy at marketing their successes and even worse at dealing with their failures. They have created a new kind of class society where privileged civil servants can lord it over the rest of the populace who don't have the same security of tenure, pensions, unsackability, and unaccountability for their performance. The democracy of the marketplace is very unequal, but it is better than no democracy at all. "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
I would phrase the question like this: How do we build more accountable governmental service systems, so that we as citizens can make sure they work for us and not lord it over us? A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
To take a simple example, in most parts of Denmark it is literally impossible to buy food without financially supporting the wars in Vietraq and Afghanistan. I can vote against those wars in the ballot box. I cannot vote against them with my euros. Much the same can be said for textiles produced in SE Asian sweatshops. And cell phones containing copper from cyanide heap-leech mining.
Alright, you might argue that I can manage without a phone if heap-leech mining bothers me so much. But you'd be hard pressed to argue that I can do without clothes and food.
So the reality is that lamenting the lack of transparency in government bureaucracies (and thus tacitly implying that there is transparency in the "free market") is simply not an apples-to-apples comparison. And that is the first point we'll want to make, I think.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
