Joe Stiglitz’s new book claims the main problem is that "we" have not "managed" globalization very well. It has benefited mainly the rich and not the poor. Funny me, I thought the main problems were tyranny, dictators, corruption, and low-quality and weak governments.
On p.144 Stiglitz seems to defend Putin’s jailing of Khodorovsky; after all it did bring money back to the Russian people.
Here is one snitty but not altogether inappropriate review. Here is a New York Times review.
Yes, the Times reviewer attacks Stiglitz on his leftist excesses, but, wow… has the spectrum of belief shifted so dramatically in the last decades….’til now the most famous academic guardian of leftist economics can preach a development doctrine that’s often as free market as Friedman’s?
The reviewer suggests Stiglitz often exhorts thusly: “Rich countries…should simply open up their markets to poorer ones, without reciprocity.† and
“Developing countries, after getting their “fair share,† must “use the money well,† he writes. So they’ll need nonkleptocratic governments, uncensored media, enforced property rights, the rule of law.” (from the NYTimes review)
Benefited “mainly” the rich yet fewer people are in poverty today than ever
before. How many of those rich people were poor in the first place?
Acccording to the Times review at least, it seemed that this quote has a lot to do with his thinking..
“It seemed terribly unfair,† he writes, “that in a world of richness and plenty, so many should live in such poverty.†
But i’d think that he, along with many other folks, need to remember that the natural state of the world is not shiny happy and equal creatures all on God’s green earth holding hands and whistling show tunes.
The default state of society is to be poor and miserable and to scrape by every waking day just for sustenance. To accomplish what mankind has accomplished in first world countries by raising the standard of living to where it is today is some feat that is probably as random and difficult as finding the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Mankind is not entitled to live in prosperity, it must find it and strive for it and fight for it every day even when it seems plentiful..
This problem involves many different circumstances and many different issues at every place and every time. There are no blanket solutions and there are no magical elixirs. Top down solutions such as green accounting, debt forgiveness, global greenbacks and international tribunals sound nice and all but don’t address any of the “real” problems that people in developing countries face.
People need the will and power to fight for whats theirs, to fight the bureaucracy and the tyranny and the oppression that keeps them from being able to achieve better for themselves. When the people in developing countries and those of us who would propose to help them find out how to do that than we’ll be well on the way to actually solving their problems.
So if i check my resume and find it weaker than some other ppersons then I should accept what they say uncritically?
I don’t think “lay off the snark” is quite the same as “accept what they say uncritically.”
Commenterlein and bernard Yomtov,
A fabulous brain and a fabulous resume does not make one infallible and critique-proof.
Just as ad hominem attacks distract from the facts at hand and instead impugne the motives of one’s opponent, similarly praising the credentials of someone and suggesting that his/her opponents back off doesn’t advance the debate forward either. Instead their goal, unstated and perhaps (?) unintentional is to try to stifle debate by saying only the annointed ones may have permission to debate.
None of which is to say that I agree or disagree with any of the actual points under debate. It just means we ought to all prefer an actual debate instead of regressing to the merits and demerits of the debaters.
Pointing out that Stiglitz is an extraordinarily smart economist and that it is therefore worthwhile to spend some more time trying to understand what he says and why he says it is a sound argument, and is certainly not some kind of inverse ad hominem.
Exactly.
Please read my previous comment.
I clearly did not suggest that Stiglitz must be right because of his credentials and that therefore everyone else should shut up.
Commenter, Tyler and many others have read Stiglitz’s excellent formal work, and are completely qualified to point out what lousy arguments he makes in his popular work.
Nowadays Stiglitz is a great source for leftist platitudes
and not much else. He is wholly predictable.
… and kudos to Barkley for doing just that.
Tyler is aghast that:
“On p.144 Stiglitz seems to defend Putin’s jailing of Khodorovsky; after all it did bring money back to the Russian people.”
Khodorovsky was hired by the Yeltsin administration to auction off Yukos, which owns 2% of the world’s oil reserves. Khodorovsky set a minimum bid of $150 million. He accepted one bid for $159 million, and then announced the auction was over. Who was the bid from you might wonder? In a remarkable coincidence, it was from the auctioneer himself!
My wife asked “Why did he pay $9 million more than he had to?” My guess is that his commission for running the auction was 6% or $9 million.
Regarding Khodorkovsky and corruption in Russia, part of what got
Putin elected was anger at the corruption and inequality associated
with the oligarchs, of whom Khodorkovsky was one. The problem has
been selective busting of oligarchs: those who have supported Putin
have been allowed to proceed as previously. Those who have criticized
him have gotten into trouble, with Khodorkovsky the prime example.
Some of the biggest thefts in history happened in Russia in the 1990s, and they were cheered on by many American economists.
Indeed, at least one American economist, Harvard’s celebrated Andrei Shleifer, had all four trotters in the Russian trough too. His behavior while in Russia on an American-taxpayer paid contract cost Harvard $26.5 in damages in settlement of a federal suit, Shliefer $2 million, and, quite possibly, his best friend, Larry Summers, his job as President of Harvard.
And yet in the middle of the scandal in 2003, Shleifer was made editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Indeed, rather than police the ethics of their profession, Shleifer’s influential friends in the economics profession have stooped so low as to play the anti-Semitism card in smearing his critics. According to Wikipedia:
“Shleifer’s involvement in Russia was investigated by David McClintick, a Harvard alumnus and journalist for Institutional Investor Magazine. His 30-page January 2006 article claims to show that “economics professor Andrei Shleifer, in the mid-1990s, led a Harvard advisory program in Russia that collapsed in disgrace.” The article drew considerable criticism among Shleifer’s colleagues, collaborators, close friends, and students. According to the Harvard Crimson[2], the university’s daily newspaper, Shleifer’s colleague and economics professor Edward Glaeser said that the Institutional Investor article “is a potent piece of hate creation—not quite ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ but it’s in that camp.” But Glaeser later apologized for his statement.[3]”
David Warsh has covered the Shleifer scandal at length on his website Economic Principals: http://www.economicprincipals.com/
Dubov,
Dazhe na saite Khodorkovskogo, napisanno chto bank MENATEP kupil Yukos
http://www.mbktrial.com/about/mbk_bio.cfm
Steve Sailers writes:
“Mexico, for example, has lots of problems with corruption and the like, but it’s hugely problem lately is that while Mexicans are pretty good at manufacturing, their Chinese competitors are great at it. Wal-Mart is opening stores in Mexico, but it’s getting vastly more of its merchandise from China. So Mexico isn’t benefitting from NAFTA the way it expected to back in the early 1990s.”
Well, yes, given that China makes up one-sixth of the world’s population it’s only natural that China will have a lot of visibility in the international economy. Incidentally, if China is so smart, why isn’t it rich? As of 2000 [according to the Penn World Tables], China had a GDP per capita of $3850, less than Mexico ($9710), Peru ($4800) and Philippines ($4060). The answer is, er…, “tyranny, dictators, corruption, and low-quality and weak governments.” Except for the “weak governments” comment, everything else applied until China began its rapid transformation into a capitalist economy and markedly improved the quality of its government.
Although specific details of the plan seem to be omited, I think that an international tribunal is needed for the gobal enforcement of rules. It has been argued that globalization will lead to disturbing environmental problems. The rapid growth caused by globalization could eventually lead to our eclipsing the earth’s limits of ecological capacity. The earth has limits to long-term economic growth. If no limits are placed on this growth, we could be headed for ecological disaster.
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