TheMarketForIdeas

New Developmentalism, Old Ideas

No. 15, Jan.-Feb. 2019

Bogdan C. Enache

The so-called anti-austerity backlash in Romania, led by the now defunct unnatural alliance between the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Social Democratic Party (PSD) of eight years ago, has kept the Romanian public on the edge and can even be credited with electoral success, but its actual anti-austerity policies are quite hard to pin down. Despite a lot of angry rhetoric, until 2015 the USL (Social-Liberal Union) government’s fiscal policy basically followed, with minor tweaks, the 2010 much maligned austerity measures put in place after an external financing agreement with international financial institutions. The 2015 tax cuts were basically a Trump-style “neoliberal” supply-side fiscal stimulus that the most leftish, non-PSD aligned, commenters criticized as the climax of post-communist Social-Democratic hypocrisy, surpassing in scale even the 2005 introduction of the flat income tax. It is only in the last year or two that the PSD government has actually strayed from more or less orthodox, even if sometimes ill-timed, fiscal policies, by adopting an ill-designed bank-assets tax, as well as a turnover tax for the energy and telecommunication companies, in order to finance a growing deficit ahead of a major electoral year. Nevertheless, there is actually a heterogeneous group of both Social-Democratic as well as National-Liberal economists that claims to propose a radically different, heterodox, set of economic policies and which has gained considerable influence over policymaking.  More

Karl Marx and Switzerland

No. 15, Jan.-Feb. 2019

Henrique Schneider

“The key to the intricate and massive system of thought created by Karl Marx (1818-83) is at bottom simple: Karl Marx was a communist”.Rothbard (1995, 317) succinctly makes a crucial point for understanding Marx: His ideas are not primarily about economics, sociology, of philosophy – let alone about singular or aggregate law-like relationships such as wage and value, time and investment, household formation and capital accumulation. If Marx dwelt in those issues, it was only to serve his ultimate aim, the definition and institution of a new society, or, his version of communism.Marxian Communism is not the outcome of some social mechanism. It is a goal to which all social mechanisms should be subservient. This goal equally subdues issues, theories, and frames of reference to its own implementation. While other forms of communism believed that such a system would be the eventual outcome, or, the synthesis, of human evolution, Marxian Communism was revolutionary. It is conceptualized as a synthesis, but one that has to be actively sought by revolution and enforced by the revolutionaries. Marxian Communism was about how to force and enforce the synthesis, thus, his idea of a synthesis was that human evolution as such is and shall be determined by an all-encompassing, synthetic, system. More

Super Bowl and a Soup Bowl

No. 15, Jan.-Feb. 2019

Octavian-Dragomir Jora

Football is a community distilled product (“You’ll never walk alone” goes the Liverpool F.C. anthem, adopted, against all odds - in the Beatles city, from a Pink Floyd show tune). Football unevenly blends feelings brewed by a collective order civilization which yet reeks of a wriggling culture of conflict. Association football is, among the rest of the team sports, the paragon that can most successfully neutralize societal disaggregation. Unlike theatrical performance (with which it imparts the technical and tactical demands of the plot, the actors getting into a play of mutual relations in which the spectator is merely a “spy”), the soccer performers are participants in a web of mutually shared strategy game rules where the spectator solely intrudes as a spy. The football show will also stand apart from the gigs, say, a pop-rock concert (akin in that they both trigger deep visceral sensations, still distinct where the former lacks the gut feeling usually associated with inward mystery myths, while the latter is a product explicitly delivered to its fans). This game will always generate peculiar reactions. It re-unites there where entropic drives are marked: the football supporters will allow themselves to be drugged with the cause and the strategy of the game, only when they experience this excitement with the punter on the left, right, in front and behind. The football fan will thrive feeding not only on the peers sitting close in the stand but also on the combined energies of the crowd, shouting against opponents, yet strangely aggregated by the empathy for the other team supporters. Go! Go! Go! Boo! More

How Migration Saved the White City

No. 15, Jan.-Feb. 2019

Teodora Marković

Few parts of the world can boast of a history as turbulent as that of the Balkan peninsula. Never quite East, nor quite West, it has been at the crossroads of different cultural and political influences throughout the centuries. One of the places that has suffered the most is Serbia’s capital, Belgrade.On the confluence of two major rivers, the Sava and the Danube, it has been coveted by many and, it seems, conquered by even more. This is the impression you get while walking through the city’s center. Old Balkan style buildings, next to lavish Art Nouveau and then simple Brutalist building right around the corner. Today, over 25% of the total population of Serbia lives in this city. Similar to most countries in Europe, Serbia is experiencing a problem with the aging of its population, as well as a significant “brain drain” ever since the 1990s. Most of Serbia is a source for emigration; however, Belgrade, as a coveted destination, has a net positive migration rate. The biggest university in the country and better job opportunities are just some of the reasons why. More

A New Way of Solidarity within NATO How it was decided at the NATO Summit in Brussels, one year ago, to adapt the Alliance to a new world. And what Romania should do

No. 15, Jan.-Feb. 2019

Florin Luca

The NATO Summit that took place in Brussels on the 11th and 12th of July 2018 – almost one year before its recently celebrated 70th anniversary – was the Euro-Atlantic event that fueled great passion from the mass-media and the general public. I was invited back then to take part to a series of important debates at the Summit, where I had the opportunity to interact with NATO high officials, heads of states or governments, ministers / parliament members. At the same time, I had a few private meetings with NATO dignitaries / statesmen (including Paolo Alli, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of NATO, and Joseph Day, Senate Liberal Leader, from Canada), leaders of big international organizations specialized on security issues. I was also given the opportunity to publicly express my opinion on the future of the North Atlantic Alliance. More

The Impact of Russia’s Strategic Interest in the Black Sea Region on the Imbalance of the Russian Economy

No. 15, Jan.-Feb. 2019

Leonela Leca

March 6th, 2009, Geneva. In an attempt to boost the diplomacy between the two nations, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Russian Minister Sergei Lavrov with a red button with the English word “reset” mis-translated into a Russian word meaning “overload”. The wrong translation proved to be a prediction for US – Russia relations for the years that followed.  More

Should the State Adjust the Market? The Case of ROBOR Economy Near Us (XIII)

No. 15, Jan.-Feb. 2019

Emil Dinga

The duel between state and market is an old story in the debates regarding the best way to run society. Of course, there are both extremists and moderates in this debate. I am not interested in covering the large array of opinions, but in exploring the essence of the issue. More precisely, I am interested in whether the state has a legitimate role in adjusting the macroeconomic variables generated by the free market and, to a finer degree, to see if we have thresholds or intensities or other contingencies in accepting or requesting the state's intervention in the market (viewed as a free market). More

Universal Basic Income – A Challenge for Social and Economic Policies Economy Near Us (XIV)

No. 15, Jan.-Feb. 2019

Monica-Florica Dutcaș

The purpose of this article is to draw the reader's attention, perhaps even initiate a debate on the Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a policy instrument for economic and social policies. It is not a comprehensive scientific study of all current problems, rather an introduction to research into a possible revolutionary social change, correlated with the fourth industrial revolution. In terms of economic growth, income inequality and the possible effects on the labour market, two important issues need to be taken into account. UBI establishes a direct causal relationship with human life. The revolutionary aspect comes from eliminating economic and legal causation between income and labour. Its global implementation or a differentiated implementation at the level of all states would require new ways of individual thinking, new systems of economic and social thinking, new institutions or even states. So far, some approaches to the concept are known, especially in the form of social experiments, different in size and coverage, that have attracted the attention of researchers and theorists, as well as of political decision makers.  More

Simion Mehedinti and the Romanian Geopolitics

No. 15, Jan.-Feb. 2019

We have the privilege and pleasure of inviting the Romanian readers of The Market for Ideas, Saturday, February 23, 2019, 13:30, at Romexpo, Pavilion B2, Stand 261, to a brief meeting with the name of the visionary geographer and geo-political scientist Simion Mehedinţi, the one who:• wrote about the “United States of Europe” as early as 1909, using systematically this syntagm in several studies and conferences, four decades before the European Coal and Steel Community, the future European Union, was born;• wrote about the “corporate state” as early as 1920, long before the phenomenon of globalization penetrated the Romanian space;• wrote about the “international aviation for world peacekeeping” as early as 1927 (in the famous work “Le pays et le peuple roumain”), anticipating NATO, which will be born two decades later. More