Political Experiments

I have written some, on this blog, about having political experiments to see what works and what doesn't.

Deng Xioping is the Chinese leader responsible for moving China towards the more market friendly economy that it now is.  He apparently started doing so by going to the poor places where the people were starving and told them to do whatever they need to in order to survive; they no longer needed to strictly follow the communist laws.  Even the conservative* communist Chinese government officials would agree to allow starving people to do what they need to in order to live.

Surprise, surprise, the private family farms produced more food than the communist run farms and so then more of the country was allowed to privately farm.

When Hong Kong was turned over to China Deng allowed some of the neighboring areas to follow Hong Kong's non-communist lead.  And things improved for the surrounding areas.

Apparently he could not have said, "we need more free markets," because the conservative communist Chinese officials would have opposed him.  But because he allowed "experiments" instead progress was made.

I think that a fine case can be made for giving each state more freedom from the federal government.  Things that work can be copied and things that don't can be avoided.  This federal laws thing is a bad deal for everyone.

We don't have a near dictatorial government here, so having our strong leader suggest that some places be exempt from the federal laws for a while may not be a possibility; but it is something to think about.

Watch the book talk about Deng Xioping at Book TV: Deng Xioping and the Transformation of China

*Apparently, the Chinese government officials who want to stick to their communism are called "conservatives".  This should be a notice to those of you who only think of political labels as they pertain to American politics.

It would make some sense to use terms like "conservative" and "progressive" as their definitions are outside of politics.  The conservative Chinese officials are "conservative" because they wish to maintain the standard operating policies of their recent history (post-1949).

If "conservative" were to mean: "maintain things as they are," then shouldn't "conservative" mean the American democrats, greens, "liberals," etc?

Who is more conservative: a person who wants to maintain the income tax, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid as it is or someone who wants to radically change all of those?

The federal income tax is 101 years old.  The past 101 years is more than 1/3 of American history.  In China a conservative is someone who wants to maintain the politics of the last 60 years.  So shouldn't Americans who want to maintain the politics of the last 100 years be called "conservatives"?