Nor were the good parts of the new economic regime
understood or explained: private property, personal profit, incentives.
The dangers of transition were flippantly ignored and the peoples of
central and eastern Europe were treated as mere guinea pigs by eager
Western economists on fat retainers. Crime was allowed to hijack
important parts of the post-communist economic agenda, such as the
privatization of state assets. Kleptocracies subsumed the newborn
states. Social safety nets crumbled.
In their vainglorious attempt to pose as accurate and, thus,
"respectable", scientists, economists refused to admit that capitalism
is not merely a compendium of algorithms and formulas - but mainly a
state of mind. It is an all-encompassing, holistic, worldview, a set of
values, a code of conduct, a list of goals, aspirations, fantasies and
preferences and a catalog of moral do's and don'ts. This is where
transition, micromanaged by these "experts" failed.
The mere exposure to free markets was supposed to unleash innovation
and entrepreneurship in the long-oppressed populations of east Europe.
When this recipe bombed, the West tried to engender a stable,
share-holding, business-owning, middle class by financing small size
enterprises.
It then proceeded to strengthen and transform indigenous institutions.
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