On Mon, 20 Sep 1999, Brad De Long wrote: > landlords. In Asia these days this argument easily turns into an > argument against democracy. And for this reason I have always feared > it: the argument that technocracy needs to be *completely* insulated > from politics has seemed to me to be a leftover from the days of > Lenin and Bismarck, and to push the debate in the wrong > direction--the question is not whether, but how institutions of > economic regulation and policy making should be accountable to > voters... Which is, in itself, an outrageously Marxist position, right? After all, the whole point of neoliberalism is to convince people that markets don't need controls (only bailouts for wealthy plungers). Once you acknowledge that markets ought to have some sort of democratic supervision, you're on the road to world revolution. I'm still amazed that the Central European developmental states get almost no press at all. Of course, now that they're inheriting the mantle of Empire from the USA, maybe this'll change. -- Dennis
