gilsey wrote:SpinningHugo wrote:
What they shared, however, was much more important, and one thing was a market based pragmatism. I think Balls accepts that too. It is that view that I still hold to.
I think we should pursue this another day but feel the need to make a point.
Market based pragmatism, not just in the UK, led to the 2007 financial crisis. That's where it takes you.
I think this is one area where I am very unfashionably conservative (NB size of c).
I don't think you can eradicate market failures. There will be bubbles, they will burst, and this will cause shocks.
You can do your best to regulate, but regulation is difficult and you can have too much of it as well as too little. (Too much and you prevent new entrants, destroying competition).
Pragmatism involves accepting that there will be busts.
BUT, we know how to deal with busts now, in a way that we did not in the 1920s or 30s. We know that the State has to fill the demand gap that is created. And that is what Labour, under Brown did in 2008 on, opposed by the Tories. (Other governments did the same too.) Modern neo-Keynsian economics tells us what to do.
The rhetoric of Stewart Wood et al, that we need to re-write the rules of society, both promises far more than it can deliver, and obscures how successful more pragmatic approaches are.