Tuesday 2 March 2010
Germany's Economic Engine
Acting in your national interest, thinking long-term, and actually making things, are the key, explains Eamonn Fingleton, whose most recent book has the splendid title, In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity.
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Interesting, and I just got done reading some stuff written by New Economy libertarians, extolling the virtues of the freewheeling entrepreneur in the Internet Age versus the stodgy world of firm manufacturing that seems prevalent in Germany. I wonder how many Wired Magazine libertarians know that many of the showpieces of the New Economy were the fruits of government or government-subsidized research.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I do have to agree with some American conservatives that the low-birthrates in many advanced countries like Germany are a bad thing. I also don't buy the "scarce resources" argument either, for two main reasons: first, much of the scarcity is artificial, the product of many factors, and second, I think humans have the capacity to overcome natural scarcity through the application of science to the problems of natural scarcity.
The trick is to figure out how to have the good things about modernity and prosperity without some of the bad things, like the rise of anti-natalism. I understand that France, for example, experienced huge population growth under dirigisme, and I wonder if that system might be a model for combining broad economic prosperity and growth with an ever rising population.