When socialism can 'work'

[unhappycamper]

http://atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GECON-01-211014.html



When socialism can 'work'
By Martin Hutchinson
Oct 21, '14

Bolivian President Evo Morales last weekend won re-election by a smashing margin. His eight-year rule has weakened Bolivian property rights, indulged in frequent nationalizations and demonized capitalism. Yet it has also produced Bolivia's best growth rates in several decades, far better than the orthodox and admirable policies pursued in 1985-2003.

Thus Morales' policy of making Bolivian clocks run backwards seems reflected by the apparent successful defiance of theory in his economics. In reality, however, there is a fairly simple explanation, and it is an important lesson for other poor countries.

Morales, the first "indigenous" president of Bolivia, is a Latin American socialist. He enjoys denouncing capitalism, but not quite a standard one. His eccentricity was demonstrated a few months ago when he caused the clocks on the Bolivian Congress to run backwards, explaining that "clockwise" was a "Northern-Hemispherist" construct, derived from clocks following sundials in a hemisphere where sundial shadows advanced clockwise, and was hence not relevant to the Southern Hemisphere, where sundial shadows run counter-clockwise.

He's quite right. There can be no doubt that if clocks had been invented in Australia or Patagonia, their hands would run the other way. He is, however, pushing it in respect of Bolivia, where La Paz is sufficiently close to the Equator that, for part of the year, sundials work the same way as they do up north.