CDR: would it be so much to ask..

[Duncan Frissell]

At 02:23 PM 9/22/00 +0100, Ken Brown wrote:

>The trouble with that use of the words (though it is the most common one
>on this list I guess) is that it defines just about every nation-state
>that ever existed as "fascist" including the so-called capitalist
>countries:  "if you don't manage it the way they want they do take it
>away" is more or less the situation in western Europe and North America
>right now. (Can anyone say "consent order"?)
>
>So we end up with words that don't really distinguish between the very
>different situations of say, the USA, & the old USSR, & Spain under
>Franco.

Most of those are "mixed economies" of course.  A fully developed fascist 
state requires that nominal versions of a market economy, wages, prices, 
profit, ownership etc. be maintained but that a full-blown command economy 
is maintained by wage and price controls and tight regulation of private 
commercial activity.

So the US is not a fascist economy (it usually scores in 5th place among 
the nations on the two Economic Freedom of lists produced by the WSJ and CATO).

DCF

----
Boston Blackie - Enemy to those who make him an enemy Friend to those who 
have no friend.