![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
||||
![]() |
![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() ![]() |
|||||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|||||
![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() ![]()
|
|||||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Peter Lebeda On inclusiveness I just want to add one more word of caution and draw attention to the broader context and to other global problems. We are deliberately here without people from Africa and South America, but, in truth, their problems are much bigger and more relevent for the future of the world than the types of problems that we are solving here. Even though some of you might not agree - biotech, digitalization and all these techonological forces may prove much more relevent for the future - but most of the world's population is still looking only to the next meal or the next harvest. This is not to criticise what we are dealing with here - it is really important - but we should put it into a broader context and be aware that whatever solution we find must be always compatible with this situation in the developing world. Making reform work I have another comment directed to Steven, who mentioned Prague, and the Central and Eastern European countries. If you want to find out why "entrepreneur" is a bad word in Europe, I think Prague these days is the best place to go. Why? Because we conducted an amazing experiment there in the beginning of the 1990s, when we started societal transformation. We were supposed to be the best country to achieve these liberal ideas. We expected to be the biggest success story for the Chicago School after Chile. We were doing quite well - we had nice growth, low unemployment, reasonable inflation - the macroeconomic indicators were fairly nice. However, I think we forgot one important thing - and this is the case for the Asian financial crisis as well - the legal and institutional framework. If you suddenly open up and run capitalism hardware, without the software that is necessary for each country; if you start copying models, which were basically created somewhere else, to another environment, it will not work. My personal impression is that Hungary and Poland are doing better than the Czech Republic because they did not rush into privatization and liberalization. They did many of these things but in a more careful manner. They took more care of the stock markets, the legal aspects, and other important factors. We tried too hard to be the best, to be the first. The energy of which you spoke is wasted now. The situation there is sad - people are disillusioned about what happened. |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
||||
![]() |
![]() Project Background | Events | Reports and Essays ![]() Zukunftszeugen | Contact Us | Home Page ![]() Last Modified: 2002-04-23 TOP ![]() |