Hi, Mike! On 9/6/07, MICHAEL YATES <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > How exactly do neoclassicals say that a nation discovers the outputs in > which it has comparative advantage? Trial and error?
exactly: a country is supposed to open itself up to trade. That will reveal its comp. adv. In fact, it would go against neoliberal ideology to hire a bunch of technocrats to figure out what the country's comp. adv. was in advance. > In a world of unequal > power, with a history of colonialism and imperialism, what possible meaning > coud the term even have? it's a totally abstract, static, and ahistorical term. > Stiglitz says that globalization has been driven in part by the elimination > of "artificial" barriers to international movements of goods, services, > money, and people. What makes whatever these barriers are "artificial?" > Isn't the "market" just as artificial?" transportation costs and the like which are not due to state actions are considered "natural." In neoliberalism, the market is considered to be "natural," too. So when the state imposes markets (and rule by the rich) with bayonets, that's simply revealing the inner nature that was hidden by "artificial" institutions. Market = natural everything else = artificial (unless it promotes the market) OM. -- Jim Devine / "In the years since the phrase became a cliché, I have received any number of compliments for my supposed ability to 'think outside the box.' Actually, it has been a struggle for me to perceive just what these 'boxes' were — why they were there, why other people regarded them as important, where their borderlines might be, how to live safely within and without them." -- Tim Page (THE NEW YORKER, August 20, 2007).
