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From: berman@psuvax1.UUCP (Piotr Berman)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Newsflash! [Subsidized Education]
Message-ID: <1778@psuvax1.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 10-Sep-85 12:31:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: psuvax1.1778
Posted: Tue Sep 10 12:31:33 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Sep-85 00:26:01 EDT
References: <3594@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
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Organization: Pennsylvania State Univ.
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> >[Berman]
> [JoSH]

I accused JoSH that he thinks that most of the people are motivated
by some ideology.
  
> No.  I think that some politicians are this way, but that most people,
> most politicians included, are not explicitly aware of the ideology
> they are exercising.  A businessman may profess the free market,
> but will nevertheless call for protectionism.  His "true" ideology
> is mercantilism.  
  
The poor guy does not know that he speaks prose.  More seriously,
whatever ideology happen to be professed, people enact (or ask for)
policies which they perceive as doing them some good.  Yoy may
provide a classification of their desires (this one is socialist,
that mercantilist, etc.), but this is your ideology, not theirs.
They are pragmatists, not ideologists.
It is a question of debate whether it is better to be an ideologist,
or pragmatist.  I myself do not know a clear answer, JoSH claims
that the coherence is more important than "adjusting to reality".
I admit that this standpoint is intellectually atractive: after
numerous adjusments to achieve this and that, a pragmatist may
achieve very little of either.
However, not adjusting may lead to very sordid consequences.
In general, only ideologists are able to meke very bold moves,
when they are necessary.  The problem is that a bold meve may
be made in the wrong direction.
A previous posting claim the behaviour of FED to cause the crash
of 1929.  They allegedly made a very bold move: decreased money
supply by one third.  Afterwards, there was New Deal, and things
improved, but only by a little.  Libertarians claim that a bold
lesser-faire policy would be a better cure for the Depression.
Keynessians claim that only truly massive public expenditures
could help, as they did indeed during WWII.  

> >Of course, the prevaling ideologies, together with traditions, have
> >their impact.  One may point that in countries without democratic
> >traditions, like Russia, China, Yugoslavia, socialist ideology yielded
> >a dictatorship, while in Sweden, with its democratic tradition, 
> >there was no tendency toward dictatorship.
> 
> You probably don't realize this, but in the latter part of the nineteenth
> century, free market ("libertarian") ideas were the ruling orthodoxy 
> in most of Scandinavia.  This was due to a large influence on the
> intellectual elite there by the French politician/writer Bastiat.
> 
An interesting information.  Also, an interesting problem: what caused
the demise of free market ideology in Scandinavia?  Apparently, at 
certain point people perceived (wrongly?) that the free market is
not working any more, so they replaced it by a mixed system, which 
seem to be working for at nearly 50 years (I admit that they got some
problems now, especially in Danmark).
What went wrong?  Perceptions, or the very free market?

[I propose that anyone who wants to continue that will go to a 
 library and read some history, I will do it tomorrow].

 Piotr Berman