Party Platforms

Mauricio Merino suffered through the hundreds of pages of dreck that are the various party platforms, and came away with a few conclusions:

1) They continue seeing the state as an almost-omnipotent creator; 2) We don't have a diagnosis completed, and much less shared, about the problems of the country; and 3) Poverty and inequality continue being the most valuable cards to play in the campaigns.

Macario Schettino infused Merino's diagnosis with his characteristic bluntness in his column today:

I'll call them by another name: statist, confused, and populist. Adorers of the state, because they are afraid. In this sense that are representatives of the society, a society of eternal adolescents, incapable of deciding and assuming its responsibility, and therefore always in need of a father, the state, to resolve problems. Confused, incapable of common ground in the diagnosis, because we haven't been capable of seriously discussing the how we arrived at the point at which we find ourselves. Populist, because all of the dealings with poverty and inequality are carried out, precisely, without the existence of a diagnosis of their origin. Which is to say, poverty and inequality aren't understood as a result of diverse economic and political forces, but rather an object apart, which can appear and disappear of its own volition.

That last sentence will give me something to chew on for a while, and both columns go hand in hand with the Leo Zuckermann column I wrote about earlier this week.

Schettino also wrote that "this crisis is the product, precisely, of state intervention." I'm all for a contrarian take on common narratives, and I'm open to listening to an argument that our instinctive lurch back toward heavier regulation and less open market is a bad idea. Perhaps we cannot regulate away stupidity and short-sightedness and greed, which are essential contributors to all bubbles. But to argue that the crisis is the exclusive result of government intervention per se (as opposed to some specific bad policies) is a bit hard to swallow. Would the Wall Street bankers who were securitizing and selling financial vehicles about which they knew nothing not have done so with less government intervention? Of course not.

Chinese currency manipulation and Bush's ownership society played a big role, but excessive American consumption as well as stupidity and greed on Wall Street --which are both about as basic drivers of this crisis as you can find-- are not the exclusive product of state intervention. Indeed, American policies over the past decade responded to each of the above as much as they provoked them.