After Johannesburg, Can We do better?

["John Gelles" <johng@xxxxxxxxxx>]

        Can we find in successes of the past ideas of what
        to do now?  The past that included the Marshall Plan
        and, before it, the comand economies of the allies in
        WW II?

        We look for the pragmatic not the pet theory.
        But can we tell these vague categories apart?

        Did Keynes' offer a pet theory?  Did Adler?

        Do we need inflation to end unemployment?
        Do we need deflation to prick financial asset
        bubbles in real estate and stocks before they
        spread to commodities and finished goods?

        Can we demand compliance with green im-
        peratives--paying for them as weapons of
        peace?

        Ought money to reflect debt more than it
        reflects current supply for sale?  Or can
        we manage it if we chose vice-versa?

        Scholars are calling for a new look at neo-
        liberal policies that ignore the plight of the
        poor and the plight of the planet.  One seeks
        a process that will find pragmatic solutions.

        Another suggests the process is essentially
        the process of thinking aloud and building
        an agenda one line at a time.

        In science we do it that way--remembering
        always that line one (and the rest) is never
        immune to proof by replicable experiment
        (or convincing simulation when necessary.)

            John Gelles


----- Related Message -----
From: James Cumes
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 6:09 AM
Subject: Re: NYT Article:
              Devotion to Free-Market Makes for Ineffectual Policy


I agree with what Geoff Edwards says below.
There is a lot of dissent with policies around the world -
economic, social, political, environmental...This dissent
is frequently expressed, sometimes violently, mostly
vehemently.

A great many people and a wide variety of "associa-
tions" take part.  In the media and on the internet,
the dissent is no less clear and no less widespread.
However, all of this dissent lacks focus. Perhaps it
would be more accurate to say that there appear to
be no "leaders" and no process which is capable of
bringing the dissent into focus and then, of course,
embarking on pragmatic ways of making the dissent
effective.

At the same time, we seem to be pretty clear that
governments and international agencies are holding
closely together.  They have been focussed and they
have stayed focussed, despite the dissent and, in the
last year, the impact of 9/11. In many ways, that is
astonishing and it is no less astonishing that dis-
tinguished people - in academic life, in business and
finance, in CEO positions, in the international agencies
 - have done nothing effective to have the issues of
the dissenters effectively discussed.

I heard a BBC program a couple of weeks ago,
constituting a roundtable of "celebrities" to discuss
issues of poverty, development and the like.  They
are people we can all respect. One of the participants
was Mary Kaldor who impressed with her sincerity,
her intellect, her articulateness and, may I say it, her
"activism" at least at the intellectual level.

George Soros was another participant to whom it is
impossible to feel other than warmly for his efforts to
use his resources for the benefit of so many.  Not as
articulate as Kaldor, his sincerity was as marked and
his "activism" has clearly gone far beyond the intellectual.

The retiring Director-General of the WTO was more
satisfied with his [own] organisation - what it had done
and what it would prospectively do - than he ...[should]
have been. His unhappiness was constrained and, in that,
he seemed to reflect the attitudes of those in charge in the
United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and others.
There was no focus on major reform, let alone "revolution,"
but rather an implication that a bit of fine tuning would make
...things right.

I might add that an African and a Latin American were both
eminently likeable and impressive for their insights. However,
nothing seemed to emerge from this high-profile group.
        We had no line or lines to pursue.
        We had no new philosophy or pragmatic guidelines.
        We had no process which we might get moving.

I think it is not too sceptical or cynical to say that Johannes-
burg left many of us in the same disturbed condition but with
nothing achieved or in prospect that might ...[augur change.]
 Promises of a kind were there; but no real imperative
appeared to change anything fundamental in our economic,
social, environmental or other policies.

We were there yesterday.  We are there today. Disturbed
but unfocussed; chaotic in our "activism," disordered in what
we should do.

Geoff Edwards says he is "not convinced that PK has
adequately tapped into the peace, green, justice and
development communities." He suggests, "The question is,
is PK ready for a transforming shift?"  I imagine that he
does not mean this in a way to be especially critical of
"PK."  If so, his criticism also applies to many others.
Indeed, it could apply over the whole spectrum of
individuals, associations, movements and what have you.

Much of what is said in "PK" is admirable in professional
and intellectual terms but, so far at least, it offers no
prospect of confronting and resolving any of the great
world issues of our time.

Can we do better?  I now come to the difficult part.

It's just too easy for each of us to imagine that we have
found the way ahead, the solution to our discontents and
so on.  Pet theories can be the bane of rational thought
and substantive progress.

But we do need a process for coming to grips with the
issues that confront us.  And for that reason I suggest
that we must contemplate a movement of the kind
embodied in Victory Over Want.

It will bring us all together. It will let all of us - a pretty
high proportion of us anyway - have our say. It will
establish an agenda and a pragmatic way of dealing
with each item on that agenda.  It will apply processes
and ways of doing things that have been successful
in the past.

It will go beyond even the emergencies of hunger and
poverty and lead us, we can realistically hope, step by
step towards a means of practical, continuing coopera-
tion and perhaps some form of pragmatic world govern-
ance.

We should give serious thought to focussing on our varied
dissents and bringing the wide variety of dissenters together
in some such way as this.

As Geoff Edwards says, "What is needed is a campaign
to develop a publicly digestible, coherent, multi-lateral
package explaining alternative economics - [and] then
to promulgate it."

James Cumes
http://VictoryOverWant.org
...

JEFF MADRICK inspired the above thoughts by
calling attention to the now burst stock price bubble;
reluctance to try to stop a bubble with interest rate
and margin requirements policies; the possibility
that market prices are their own best justification;
the opposite thought that we may have undue faith
in the magic of markets, the Asian financial crisis
in 1997 and sharp cuts in interest rates to meet it;
Nobel prize winner Akerlof's use of behavioral
economics to criticize oversimplified laissez-faire
theories:
            The possibility that market bubbles can
exist and should be kept under control, that
unemployment can often be pushed lower by
government without generating inflation, that
people will not save enough on their own, and
that liberalized global capital flows have been
damaging.
            He argues that monetary and fiscal policies
do matter in creating jobs and raising incomes.

 The starting point for Mr. Akerlof and his colleagues is to
 make the central assumption of economics realistic. People
 are often not rational, maybe even most of the time.
...
Mr. Akerlof and his colleagues have attacked today's
conventional wisdom, which dominates the halls of power,
on the basis of its own assumptions and values.

Mr. Akerlof's side, I believe, is winning this battle of ideas.
The battle for power may be another matter.