Reddit mentions of Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

And in return for that loan, the world bank forces the country to adopt neoliberal policies. Like how S Korea was forced to not run deficits after the economy tanked, and over 100 corporations a day were going bankrupt. Meanwhile, the US was bailing out its big corporations. Isn't the world bank controlled by member countries based on their GDP? Doesn't this make the US the controlling member?

Here is a link to that book I mentioned:

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596913991

Why is the world bank and the IMF trying to get other countries to adopt monetarist policies, while we still practice Keynesianism? As Chang points out in that book, we are 'kicking out the ladder' for developing countries.

Ha-Joon Chang's Bad Samaritans is an awesome rebuttal of the free trade nonsense the libertarians always push.

He's a Reader at Cambridge University, but I don't know exactly what that means. Trying to find out I started feeling bad that I didn't go to Cambridge.

> a country like South Korea most certainly developed largely in part because of free trade. A sweatshop, for all its gross inhumanity, is just another means of specialization: South Korea's comparative advantage (when it was still a poor country) was its inexpensive labor. Key to the growth of the Asian Tigers was specialization in industries whose products could be sold cheaply to already-developed countries.

This is a common fallacy that many people seem to have. The truth is that South Korea was not a 'free market' at all.

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596913991

People assume that because South Korea was friendly to the US (in fact they sent more troops to Vietnam than any of our allies), that they had a 'free market' (or what is today referred to as free market by the neoconservatives.

The truth is that they were a dictatorship, and this guy ran a centrally planned command economy that turned South Korea from one of the 5 poorest countries in the world to one of the 10 or 20 richest. The story of South Korea is a perfect example of the possible success of a centrally planned economy, run for the benefit of the entire country.

How about checking your own facts. South Korea became an economic powerhouse through protective tariffs and economic policies.

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596913991

Don't know where he has written about it but Ha Joon Chang's Bad Samaritan's covers it in detail and was fantastic.

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596913991

“Lucid, deeply informed, and enlivened with striking illustrations, this penetrating study could be entitled "economics in the real world." Chang reveals the yawning gap between standard doctrines concerning economic development and what really has taken place from the origins of the industrial revolution until today. His incisive analysis shows how, and why, prescriptions based on reigning doctrines have caused severe harm, particularly to the most vulnerable and defenseless, and are likely to continue to do so. He goes on to provide sensible and constructive proposals, solidly based on economic theory and historical evidence, as to how the global economy could be redesigned to proceed on a far more humane and civilized course. And his warnings of what might happen if corrective action is not taken are grim and apt.” ―Noam Chomsky

Yes, please do educate yourself a little bit.

The idea that 'planned economies' do not work was discredited almost a century ago.

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596913991

Planned Economies are actually the best way to improve an economy quickly. See South Korea as an example.