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"Fabrizio J. Bonsignore" <fbonsignore@beethoven.com> wrote in message 
news:768f7623.0410070553.346b0d71@posting.google.com...
> Latinamerican countries follow all 'recipes' of academia and yet fail
> to achieve sustained development. Could it be that people actually

Therein lies the problem.  As poster "royls" points out repeatedly on this 
list, economics (academic and otherwise) has become corrupted insofar as 
they have obscured the "Georgist" critique of taxation---to wit, in its 
broadest form, that Ricardian land rents should be mostly taxed away, and 
other taxes that are both more distortionary (less efficient) and less 
equitable should be reduced.

I haven't researched what those in favor of land value taxation have to say 
about tax structures in Latin America, but given the penury in places like 
Brazil, I can't imagine it's good.  Not to mention all that anecdotal stuff 
about huge landholdings in there.

In case you're not familiar with it, LVT proponents wouldn't necessarily 
advocate breaking up large estates and then making land grants (though Latin 
America might be so screwed up that that might be a necessary initial step). 
Rather, they advocate taxing away (at least much or most of) Ricardian land 
rents---that is, the income on land due to the land itself (its location, 
fertility, etc, as opposed to improvements on the land).  This allows a 
market solution that promotes *both* efficiency and equity.  One of the few 
win-wins in economics.  One interesting point is how modern economists have 
gone out of their way to obscure it; Georgists and their allies argue that 
it's because they're in the pockets of the wealthy, many/most of whom are 
(big) landholders.

Good links, from a "geo-" libertarian point of view (which I don't agree 
with in its entirety, but these are really well written):

http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/tma68/geo-faq.htm
http://geolib.pair.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html

Finally, note that there's nothing "socialist" about LVT schemes.  Nor 
anything remotely Marxist---the person who did the most to push LVT (Henry 
George) had substantial disagreements with Marx.

> *behave* differently from the way people behave in countries that have
> achieved development?
>
> Man is supposed to act economically as a self interested (quasi)
> rational entity following his own satisfaction without regarding that
> of others. But waht if people actually take others into account when
> performing economic activities?
>
> My experience trying to make a living in Mexico taught me that the
> norm is precisely to take into account the welfare of others, but in a
> *negative* way. Competition is normally seen as a zero sum game, I win
> what you loose, but I've seen many times behaviour of the type "we
> both loose", even when there were known options where both of the
> parties would win. More often than not, the party choosing the
> loose-loose option would have been the party winning the least in the
> win-win option (though sometimes that wouls be true considering nit
> the actual payoffs only but total earnings after several games). This
> behaviour I call envy.
>
> So it may be that generalized envy lies at the core of the
> underdevelopment  phenomenon.In countries where wealth has
> historically been concentrated in a very few hands ans is not easily
> aquired by most, this kind of predatory competition is bound to
> happen, particularly if it is preceived that noveau riches will
> readily support the statu quo and help keep the socioeconomical
> differences. Though laws may be passed to curb down unfair
> competition, there remain many opportunities to put obstacles to the
> activities of others.
> Within firms, envy would keep costs at a higer level for a given
> technology due to employees' internal struggles. At hte industry and
> interindustry level output would be lower than optimal due to firms'
> inefficiencies and lost business opportunities. Generally,
> overachievers and efficiency would be punished while underachievement
> and slugishness would be rewarded, since that would make others
> achievements stand out. The net effect would be an economically
> depressed level of output where the economy would reach equilibrium in
> a local maximum and that equilibrium would be stable due to the
> equalizing effects of envious behaviour, in a similar manner as a
> keynesian economy stabilizes at a high unemployment level.
>
> In an envy pervaded economy governmental policies would be less
> effective than expected both by officials' missapplication ("all they
> need is money") and the reaction of economic agents ("they can be
> better than me"), so a classical governmental policy solution to
> underdevelopment is not feasible.
> What would then break the underdevelopment impasse? As many times has
> been pointed out, education is essential, but not in the sense of
> spreading technical knowledge but rather with the goal of changing
> basic social values to make individuals more cooperative and less
> sensitive to people's conditions.
>
> Underdevelopment can be considered as an economy at some
> quantity/quality of Chaos. Development would have a lower
> quantity/quality of Chaos (disorder). Borders are necessary to keep
> the differences, though in the border there should be a very
> interesting non-smooth mix of chaotic regions, ie, a more chaotic
> system, but only in the fringe (can lead to quiet static dynamic
> states). Ideally, the more developed region shoud be "moving" into the
> less developed region to absorb and "fix" the state of development
> once the differential levels start smoothing out due to economic
> interactions of free agents (may depend on institutions). At the
> border both levels of development must mix and flux; by moving the
> border at a given moment of time the new desired level of development
> would be fix and absorned into a sustainable dynamic. Here it is
> important to notice that bussiness cycles must be shallower in
> developed countries than in underdeveloped countries. Due to the
> butterfly effect, underdeveloped (more chaotic) regions must
> experiment bigger, more notorious effects for a given disturbance.
> (Mexico gets the flu when America sneezes, etc.) Definitely, even
> though we can see order in current economies and create deterministic
> models, the underlying dynamics are chaotic, the smoothness is only
> apparent at the surface as an epiphenoma, like temperature (a single
> figure) being the result of the chaotic interaction of molecules.
> Developed countries would look as a very well mixed yoghurt, while
> underdeveloped economies would look like frappe.
>
>
> These cursory analysis can be mathematized. Volunteers?
> Search "Fabrizio J Bonsignore" google groups, sort by date
> visit ghamac.org /miniface.jpg
> Danilo J Bonsignore