[ExI] government corruption

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 7:02 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/2/24 Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>:
>
>> ### In economics it's all a matter of marginal analysis - West Germany
>> was less socialist than East Germany, especially in the beginning when
>> they were most successful. Therefore, making a society marginally less
>> socialist (over the beastly howling of the SDP) makes it more
>> successful, and from the example of Singapore we know that going much
>> further towards freedom is even better. Therefore, as a practical
>> observation, the more capitalist the world is, the better the lives of
>> all, at least within the range defined by the currently most
>> capitalist countries such as Hong Kong and Singapore.
>
> West Germany wasn't just a little bit socialist, even under the most
> conservative governments it was more socialist than the most radical
> U.S. politician would dare to discuss in public if he wanted a chance
> at being elected.

### No, this is not true. The levels of taxation and regulation in
West Germany were actually lower than in the US especially under
Erhardt and right thereafter. For a long time Germans used to welcome
immigration, did not punish innovation and entrepreneurship.

-------------------------

> Similarly with a country like Sweden, which during an almost
> continuous century of socialist government went from being one of the
> poorest states in Europe to one of the wealthiest.

### Sweden never was in a war, doesn't have a minority population
problem and *still* reached only the personal income level of Alabama.
If this is a socialist success story, just let me run away faster.
Also, Swedes were forced to institute pro-market reforms in the last
15 years, with significant improvements in economic performance.

-------------------------------------

 On the other hand,
> there is the example of Spain, Greece and all those States in Central
> and South America which, with generous U.S. help, did their utmost to
> prevent the socialists from gaining any influence by jailing them,
> shooting them and eliminating corruptible democratic processes; but
> unfortunately never achieved results as good as those of Singapore, or
> even East Germany.

### Of course, simply shooting idiots and replacing them with thugs
doesn't work out well. You need capitalists.

Rafal