Socialism won't work for Obama, either

In 1991, only days after the failed Soviet coup, a bunch of journalists, academics and others met with some gleeful Russians in Aspen. The visitors saw themselves as free at last.

They had capitalist aspirations – some were followers of Milton Friedman – and their hopes were as bright and optimistic as they were dull and pessimistic the very next year in a follow-up meeting.

In 1991, only days after the failed Soviet coup, a bunch of journalists, academics and others met with some gleeful Russians in Aspen. Not only had unrepentant Communist hardliners failed to oust Mikhail Gorbachev from power, but it was clear the whole Soviet system was failing apart. The visitors saw themselves as free at last.

They had capitalist aspirations – some were followers of Milton Friedman – and their hopes were as bright and optimistic as they were dull and pessimistic the very next year in a follow-up meeting.

Things had not worked out well because continued government underwriting of faltering enterprises had not produced any better results in a non-Marxist state than in one that was mixing some old practices with some new ones.

I was at both sessions, and recall how American economists at the second tried to explain how you had to let market-blind businesses die out despite the sense of the Russian guests that this would lead to social catastrophe.

If the businesses were not producing what people wanted at a price people would pay, they were simply taking up resources that could be better allocated elsewhere, the economists said.

To have wealth and growth, you had to make room for productive, innovative enterprises that would eventually employ more people than had lost their jobs when the old companies withered into oblivion.

My question is, where are those economists now that we need them to preach the same lesson to the Obama administration,? [snip]

It’s one thing for Russians with little background in the workings of free enterprise to cling to disproven ways, but something far less understandable for this country to engage in a socialist experiment that will be damaging to the whole nation in the long run...

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