Dynamic Capitalism
Edmund S. Phelps
Wall Street Journal (10OCT06)
Mr. Phelps, a McVickar Professor of Political
Economy at Columbia University, was the recipient of the 2006 Nobel Memorial Price in Economic
Sciences.
2 economic systems in the
West:
1) Private-ownership (US, Canada,
UK)
2) Private-ownership with protection of the interests of "stakeholders" and
"social partners" (Continental Europe)
• System 1 is marked by greater
openness to the implementation of new commercial ideas coming from
entrepreneurs plus a pluralism of view among the financiers who select
the ideas to nurture by providing the capital and incentives necessary for their development.
• System 2 institutions include
big employer confederations, big union and monopolistic
banks. This system operates to discourage changes such as relocations and the
entry of new firms, and its performance depends on established companies in cooperation with local and national
banks. What it lacks in flexibility it tries to compensate for with technological sophistication. In
Germany #2 is known as "social market economy"; in France - "social democracy"; in Italy -
"concertazione".
• System 2's theory was that not having
to fear fluid market condition, an entrenched company could afford to develop radical innovations. With
industrial confederations and state mediation available, such companies could arrange to avoid costly duplication
of their investments (ie, intervention to settle conflicts about the economy's direction). This corporatist
economy was expected to usher in a new futurismo that was famously symbolized by Severini's paintings of fast
trains (what was important was that the train was rushing forward, not that it ran on time).
• Important Question:
who is accountable when things go
wrong?
• Friedrich
Hayek (late 1930's) began the modern theory of how a
capitalist system, if pure enough, would possess the greatest dynamism - not of socialism and not of
corporatism.
1) everyone down to the humblest employee
has "know-how". Openness to the ideas of all or most participants generates new ideas.
2) pluralism of experience that the financiers bring to bear in their decisions
gives a wide range of entrepreneurial ideas a chance of insightful evaluation.
3) financier and the entrepreneur do not need the approval of the state or of
social partners (not accountable to them if the project goes badly).
4) big state/union oversight entities won't undertake projects that are too
opaque and uncertain.
5) the managers and consumers decide which new innovations to try and
adopt; where the Continental system convenes experts to set a product standard before any version is
launched.
• The issues swirling around capitalism
today concern the consequences of its dynamism. The same capitalist dynamism that adds to the desirability of
jobs (ie, fun, challenging problem-solving jobs) also adds to their precariousness. Important to have a sense
of perspective when confronted with the prospect of a general slump and to check one's anxiety. In truth, the
Continental economies are also susceptible to wide swings. Even a market socialist economy might be
unpredictable. In fact, it is the corporatist economies that have suffered the widest swings in recent
decades (US and UK unemployment rate have been remarkably steady for 20 yrs). When the Continental economies
are down, the paucity of their dynamism makes it harder for them to find something new on which to base a
comeback.
• The US economy might be said to suffer
from incomplete inclusion of the disadvantaged. But that is less a
fault of capitalism than of electoral politics. US economy is not
unambiguously worse than the Continental ones in this regard: low-wage workers at least have access to jobs
(important value to them to be role models to their family and community).
• The "downside" of capitalism is
exaggerated by some Western Continental Europeans because they consider its elements morally wrong (in the same way as birth control,
nuclear power, sweatshops). There are wrong in spite of the consequence of barring them.
• Street protesters (eg, WTO, [Occupy
Wall Street]) tend to associate business with established
wealth; in their minds, giving greater latitude to businesses would
increase the privileges of old wealth. By an "entrepreneur" they appear to mean a rich owner of a bank or
factory, while for others it meant a newcomer, a parvenu who is an outsider. A tremendous confusion is created by associating "capitalism" with
entrenched wealth and power. Hayek's capitalism
means opening industries to start-up companies, and opening existing companies to new owners and new managers
(adequate degree of competition; note: monopolies like Microsoft are a deviation from the
model).
• Generating more dynamism through the
injection of more capitalism does serve economic justice. We all feel good to see people freed to pursue
their dreams. Yet Hayek and Ayn Rand went too far in taking such
freedom to be an absolute, the consequences be damned. The conception
of 'economic justice' is aptly discussed by John Rawls. In any organization of the economy, the participants
will score unequally in how far they manage to go in their personal growth. An organization that leaves the
bottom score lower than it would be under another feasible organization is unjust. So a new organization that
raised the scores of some, thought at the expense of reducing scores at the bottom, would not be justified.
Yet a high score is just if it does not hurt others. "Envy is the vice of mankind" said Kant (Rawls greatly admired Kant).
• Rawls's lowest score candidates are the
workers with the lowest wage - the "least advantaged": Their self-realization lies mostly in marrying, raising
children and participating in the community and it will be greater the higher the wage (whereas for others
self-realization comes from their career). Increased dynamism created by liberating private entrepreneurs and
financiers tends to raise productivity and in turn pulls up the bottom wages (or any rate does not lower them). Not
unjust. Fact: Two centuries of commercial innovations have pulled up the wage rates at the low end and
everywhere else.
• The tone above is wrong. As Kant
also said, persons are not to be made instruments for the gain of
others. Suppose the wage of the lowest-paid workers was foreseen to
be reduced over the entire future over innovations conceived by entrepreneurs. Are those whose dream is to
find personal development through a career as an entrepreneur not to be permitted to pursue their dream? To
respond, we have to go outside Rawls's classical model, in which work is all about money. In an economy in which
entrepreneurs are forbidden to pursue their self-realization, they have the bottom scores in self-realization--no
matter if they take paying jobs instead--and that counts whether or not they were born the "least advantage".
So even if their activities did come at the expense of the lowest-paid workers, Rawlsian justice in this extended
sense requires that entrepreneurs be accorded enough opportunity to raise their self-realization score up to the
level of the lowest-paid worker (LPW)--and higher, of course, if workers are not damaged by support for
entrepreneurship. In this case, too, then, the introduction of entrepreneurial dynamism serves to raise
Rawls' bottom scores.
• Actual capitalism departs form
well-functioning capitalism -- monopolies too big to break up, undetected
cartels, regulatory failures and political corruption. Capitalism in
its innovations plants the seeds of its own encrustation with entrenched power. These departures weight
heavily on the rewards earned, particularly the wages of the least advantaged, and give a bad name to
capitalism. It would be a non sequitur to give up on private entrepreneurs and financiers as the wellspring
of dynamism merely because the fruits of their dynamism would likely be less than they could be in a less imperfect
system.
• Capitalism is justified by 1) providing
expectable benefits of the lowest-paid workers, 2) providing the entrepreneurial and creative types the opportunity
for their self-expression.
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