Do Not Crack Down on Black Markets
One route toward freedom that former President Gorbachev had adopted was to crack down on the villains of the black market. We might conclude that the mindset of the Eastern bloc has a long way to go in understanding freedom, except that there are precious few Westerners who understand this problem either. For the black marketeers are not villains; if they sometimes look and act like villains, it is only because their entrepreneurial activities have been made illegal. The “black market” is simply the market, the market which Soviets claim to be searching for, but which has turned “black” precisely because it has been declared illegal. It is the market crippled and distorted, but it is there, in this despised “black” area, that the Soviets will find the market most readily. Instead of cracking down, then, the governments should, immediately, set the black market free.
Do Not Confiscate the People’s Money
The Soviet Union suffers from the problem of “ruble* overhang,” that is too many rubles chasing too few goods. It is generally admitted that the “overhang” is the result of comprehensive price fixing, by which the government has set prices far below market-clearing levels. Over the years, the Soviet government has been rapidly printing new money to finance its expenditures, and this increased money supply, coupled with ever-dwindling supply of goods resulting from the breakdown of socialist planning, has created aggravated shortages and an excess supply of money over goods available.
It is commonly acknowledged that the shortages will be relieved and the overhang abolished, if prices were set free to move. But the government fears the wrath of unhappy consumers. Perhaps, but it is scarcely a solution to do what Gorbachev did, that is, follow the uninspired path of the Brazilian “free market” President Collor de Mello[grifo com gostinho de nosso], who in the spring of 1990, in an attempt to reverse hyperinflation, arbitrarily froze 80 percent of all bank accounts. Gorbachev did one better by suddenly making useless all large-ruble bills, allowing only a small number to be exchanged for smaller dominations. This is no way to eliminate an overhang; at best, the cure is much worse than the disease. In the first place, in this supposed strike at black marketers, it has been rather the savings of the average Soviet that has been destroyed, since the black marketeers were shrewd enough to have moved already into precious metals and foreign currency. But even more important: By this action, the government delivers the second body blow of a one-two punch at the average citizen, and at the economy. The first punch was for the government to inflate the money supply so as to engage in its usual, wasteful expenditures. Then, after the money has been spent, and prices driven up—in either open or repressed fashion—then the government, in its wisdom, begins to exclaim at the horrors of inflation, blames black marketeers, greedy consumers, the rich, or whatever, and proceeds to the second monstrous punch of confiscating the money long after it has come into private ownership. Whether or not one calls this process “free market,” it remains confiscatory, unjust, statist, and a double set of implicit taxes and burdens upon the economy.
Do Not Increase Taxes
Unfortunately, one of the “lessons” that many East Europeans have absorbed from Western economists is the alleged necessity of sharply raising taxes and making them progressive. Taxes are parasitic and statist; they cripple energies, savings, and production. Taxes invade and aggress against the rights of private property. The higher the taxes, the more the economy becomes socialistic; the lower they are, the closer the economy approaches true freedom and genuine privatization, which means a system of complete rights of private property. The Mazowiecki attempt to achieve privatization and free markets in Poland was greatly hampered by the imposition of far higher and progressive taxes.
As part of the shift toward freedom and desocialization, then, taxes should be drastically lowered, not raised.
Government Firms Owning Each Other is Not Privatization
I owe to Dr. Yuri Maltsev the information that the much-vaunted Shatalin plan for the Soviet Union, which was supposed to bring about privatization and free markets in 500 days, was really not privatization at all. Apparently, existing government firms in each industry, instead of being actually privatized—that is, owned by private individuals—would have been owned (or 80 percent owned) by other firms in the same industry. This would mean that giant state monopoly firms would continue to be state monopoly firms, and be self-perpetuating oligarchies rather than truly privately owned. Privatization must mean private property.**
* Ruble = Rublo, moeda russa
** Semelhança com as "privatizações" Tupinambás? Ou seriam - a despeito do termo ter sido cunhado por PTRALHAS, é sensacional - PRIVATARIAS?
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário