neoclassical logic (Brad on - Jim O'Connor)

[Barbara Laurence]

The 700,000 people Suharto killed weren't just any old people, they were
people opposed to his rule.  Just as Hitler was able to accelerate recovery
when he killed the SA leaders and Co., so did Suharto by eliminating
opposition to his project to speed up Indonesian growth.  As Brad noted
earlier in his post, you can't separate politics from economics.  There's
another issue here, though.  That's the numbers, quite official, which
makes me wary of them, partaining to the "doubling of rural living
standards" and "nationwide GDP per capita quadrupled."  Most killed were in
the countryside, which meant that the living had on the average more assets
like land and tools.  The killing was a redistribution of wealth, too.
Clearly, average living standards would go up, under these conditions.
Also, esp. in rural Indonesia, most of Indonesia, there was much
self-provisioning by families and villages; so when the market came or
grew, it was at the expense, big or small, of this self-provisioning by
families and villages; so when the market came or grew, it was at the
expense, big or small, of this self-provisioning.  As for increasing per
capital GDP four times under the old fart, this was the result of many
things that had nothing to do with the growth of capital, technology and
the like.  Such as redistribution of wealth from islands where nothing is
counted to the capitol city.  Such as an horrendously unequal income
distribution, making averages meaningless.

	C. Geertz years ago wtote Agriculture Involution, which is the key
to understanding Indonesia economically.  Run by the Dutch who were afraid
of Brit influence and power, they failed to monetize the economy, i.e.,
prevented people from meeting needs via imports of mfg goods from UK.  This
resulted in not only the then highest land yields in the world in rice, the
basic food, but also in extensive self-provisioning in everything from
transport to medical supplies to furniture, iron productus, etc.  In such
an economy, it would be easy to show a growth of pc income or living
standards because all that happened, in some large or small part I don't
know which, is that self-provisioning was replaced by market commodities,
and self-earned property and self-managed labor was replaced by wage labor.