Talk about inflation.

You're the expert on matters South Korean, so correct me if I'm wrong. But what I've read of the plethora of Korean five year plans (they seem to love them) is that by and large they've encouraged free markets, hence their prosperity. There's a qualitative difference between the economic plans of South Korea, which have encouraged enterprise and diversified export, and the totalitarian plans of North Korea, for instance, and many other nations professing a self-sufficient Socialism.

I would take issue with you concerning the idea that free markets have no brain. In fact, free markets are the necessary mechanisms for supplying the incredibly complicated and sophisticated inputs required in the supply-demand chain in a healthy economy. If central planners are actually smart enough to create infrastructure, support diverse industries and exports, then LEAVE THEM ALONE, the results can be dramatically prosperous.

Start fixing prices and redistributing wealth and the end result is almost always disaster. Take Venezuela, India, any number of African Nations, the Soviet Union, the Roman Empire under Diocletian's "reforms" - etc.

 

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Guess that many people do not want a centrally planned economy, as we know how such systems have failed. But a "free" system that constantly increases income inequality (as measured by, say, the Gini coefficient) may in the long run not be that stable either. Now the big question is, are we still talking about coins here?

Christian

 

What system in the long run is stable?

 

BTW, I believe the question to be coin related. I think coin collecting goes through cycles of system fatigue, corruption, and cronyism. Especially in grading.

 

Of course you're right. About it all. Being allowed pretty decent access to the North Atlantic economy certainly doesn't hurt.

Interestingly, it seems that you've made my point though, too: It wasn't the "free" market that guaranteed those foreign loans to Korean businesses. It wasn't the "free" market that told businesses into exactly what sector they were to go into and what product they were to make at certain guaranteed prices. It wasn't the "free" market that gave them production goals with guarantees of great rewards for success, and (personal...very personal) severe consequences for failure (very much unlike nowadays). It wasn't the "free" market that bailed businesses out when they failed...and put them back on their feet again, 'hence their prosperity'.

When your country's greatest resource is USAID and over half the population have tapeworms and starve every spring, the utility of utopian "free" markets at THAT point in one's existence just might seem out of reach, perhaps.

And the Brain. I guess what I meant was a "disinterested" brain, that would result in a consideration of the needs of most people over the long run. When the "mechanism of incredibly complicated and sophisticated inputs" creates something like the overinflated financial sector that isn't interested in generating finance for the real economy as much as just keeping on inflating itself, redistributing wealth to themselves, and bets against the rest of us and wins and gets wealthier as a result...well, that's where I get a little cynical about the "free" market's, uh, 'brain'. Sometimes, you want a freakin' BRAIN to set it straight.

And at the risk of getting back to the topic of coins, I think I should do just that. Even though I'm a novice when it comes to them, I think I sound better when I discuss coins. Not so much macroeconomics. I sound less grumpy, too.