Sowing Dragons

[Brad De Long]

>On Sat, 8 Apr 2000, rc-am wrote:
>
>>  Who got rich?  And, on what basis?  "East Asia"...  ??
>
>Yep. The fastest economic growth rates of any economic zone on the planet,
>plus remarkably equitable distribution of aforesaid growth in Japan,
>Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, etc. They got rich by breaking the rules
>of the market, not playing by the rules of the market, as Amsden and Wade
>have shown. Really, really rich. Which doesn't mean that these societies
>are utopias or that they aren't trashing their environment and that their
>workers aren't horrendously exploited.  But if we're going to change the
>world-system, we've got to understand this basic fact: East Asia is a net
>creditor to the US, to the tune of a trillion bucks. See
>http://www.mof.go.jp/english/e1c018.htm for the gory details.
>
>>  So, what would a socialist critique of the state look like, by your
>>  estimation?
>
>It would criticize what exists, of course. But what exists in East Asia
>and Central Europe ain't Wall Street-style rentier madness. Maybe some
>day far in the future this might happen, but right now these zones are
>characterized by the developmental state in terms of form, and keiretsu
>capitalism in terms of content. Weird as it sounds, the EU really is a
>giant humongous developmental state, with its very own financing arm (the
>EIB, at http://www.eib.org).
>
>-- Dennis

And the big question is: Why do developmental states work so well in 
East Asia and western Europe, and appear to work so badly (India, 
Argentina, et cetera) elsewhere?

Brad DeLong