Bliyaal

MILTON FRIEDMAN ve CHARLIE BROWN

Gectigimiz ay Monetarist iktisat okulunun kurucusu unlu liberal iktisatci Milton Friedman oldu. Kendisini pek sevmem. Liberal politikalari gereksiz yere asiri derecede destekleyen ve gerceklere kulaklarini tamamiyla kapayan bir tavri oldugunu dusunurum. Yuksek lisans yaparken "Kapitalizm ve Ozgurluk" adli kitabini zorlanarak okumustum. Kitabin bir yerinde, irkcilik yapmanin yasaklanmasinin ozgurluklere mudahale anlamina gelecegi seklinde bir seyler soyluyordu. Ona gore, irkciligi onlemenin tek yolu, irkcilik yapanlari aksi icin ikna etmekti.

Arada bir takip ettigim "Liberal Hareket" adinda bir site var. Kendilerine ideolojik bakis acisi olarak liberalizmi benimsemeye "calisan" bir takim amator genclerin genelde devleti elestirdikleri bir yer. Boyle genclerin kendilerini liberalizm denen sonu olmayan bir yol icinde harcamalarina "bir bilen" olarak razi olmadigimdan, arada, tartistiklari konularda bilgili ve deneyimli biri olarak, ben de yorum yazip yanlislarini kendilerine gostermeye ve onlari dogru yola yonlendirmeye calisiyorum. Ama genc olduklari icin akillari da bes karis havada, o yuzden buyuk sozu dinlemiyorlar.

Iste, birkac gun once sitede Friedman'in 1980 yilinda Amerika'da televizyonda yayinlanan "Free to Choose" adli programinin videolarini gosteren bir internet sitesinin adresi yayinladi. Dizinin, 1980 tarihli orijinal bolumlerinin yaninda, 1990 yilina ait birkac guncellestirilmis versiyonu da sitede yer aliyor. Programlari baslangicta sunanlarin arasinda Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ronald Reagan, Steve Allen gibi adamlar da var. Merak edip, bu programlardan bir kac tanesini izledim. Acikcasi, programin, liberalizm ve sosyalizm gibi konularda fazla bilgisi olmayan kisiler icin oldukca ikna edici bir icerigi oldugunu soylemek lazim. Friedman, piyasa ekonomisinin isleyisini cesitli ulke ornekleri vererek, oldukca "ayartici" bir sekilde anlatiyor. Hos, bazi yerlerde isine gelmeyen tarihi gercekleri es geciyor, ama olsun; ne de olsa bunu yapmak liberalligin sanindan sayilir.

Programi izlerken ilginc buldugum bazi yerleri not aldim:

1) Programin guncellestirilmis ilk bolumunun acilisini Arnold Schwarzenegger yapiyor. Baslik: "The Power of Market". Friedman uzun uzun Hong Kong'dan, oradaki piyasanin guzel guzel isleyisinden bahsediyor. Programin ikinci yarisinda ise bir tartisma var. Tartismada da Milton amcam piyasayi savunuyor, ama bir ara John Galbraith karsisinda bayagi sikisiyor.

O esnada kendisi beni epey sasirtan bir sey soyluyor. "Lan, yoksa yanlis mi duydum?" deyip bir daha dinledim. Abooov! - Milton amcam resmen is adamlari topluluguna laf ediyor! (Koseli parantez icindeki rakamlar video sayacini gosteriyor) Iste:

[40:18] " As David says, a major enemy of a free market is a business interest. The business community is a major enemy and the problem in this society is to have the public at large to understand the importance of free markets so as to protect themselves against the depredation of the business community with their tariffs, their quotas, their special provisions, and so on."

Programin ilerleyen kisminda tartismayi yoneten kadin soyle bir soru soruyor:

[41:21] "Let me give you another hypothetical. What if you have a social need, say a disease which is very lethal but affects very few people and you don't have a company who has an interest because it's not going to make very much money. There's not a large market for the good to produce a drug. Does the goverment have any role there to step in and try to stimulate certain social purposes?"

Financial Times'dan gelen David soyle cevap veriyor:

"I can't imagine how the goverment would, in the first place."

Onun hemen ardindan Friedman atliyor:

"In any event, you must realize that government isn't the only recourse. The great period, when were the nonprofit hospitals of the United States founded? Almost all of them were in the 19th century, during the heyday of laissez faire. There are private charitable activities which are essentially the most effective way of handling the kinds of things you have described."

Bunlarin ardindan konuya Galbraith daliyor ve iki beton kafali liberali bozuyor:

"A little bit of faithfullness to the history surely would cause you to concede that in 1937, when we inaugurated social security, in 1965 when we inaugurated Medicare, we did so because the private charitable systems, the private insurance systems to take care for people when they were old and when they were sick were failing in a gross way to meet the needs of the American people. And those programs, which are goverment programs, have at least had the virtue of extending access to health care and extending income security when you are old to a very very large part of the population that never had it before. And I would argue, too, that in addition to the regulatory functions and the juducial functions that we certainly agree on, that there is in a rich society, which can afford to take care of people who fell out of the market process, who weren't lucky or gifted or fortunate in their economic lives, to take care of those people when they are old and when they are sick."

David apisip kaliyor. Friedman ise konuyu hemen baska tarafa cekmeye calisiyor. Ikisi de yangindan mal kacirir gibi cevre konusuna dogru kosuyorlar.

2) Ikinci video olan "The Tyranny of Control"da, Milton amcam hararetle serbest piyasayi savunmaya devam ediyor ve Hindistan ile Japonya'yi ornek olarak veriyor. Maalesef, Milton her iki ulkeyi de karsilastiriken, bunlarin tarihlerine iliskin yalan yanlis seyler soyluyor. Hindistan'in dokuma endustrisi ile neredeyse alay ediyor, ama Ingilizler'in kendi tekstil endustrileri ile rekabet etmesin diye Hintli dokuma ustalarinin ellerini kestigini atlayip geciyor! Japonya'nin serbest ticaret ile gelistigini soyluyor, ama Japonlarin kendi ulkelerini dis ticarete zorla, yani limanlarinin topa tutulmasi ile actigini es geciyor! Anlayacaginiz, Milton kiviriyor! Yalniz, Friedman'in dis ticaret hadleri ile ilgili olarak anlattiklari ilginc:

[26:20] "But even when the international market and labor seem to work to everyone's advantage, people still put up arguments against it. The usual argumanet against complete free trade is that cheap labor from abroad will take jobs away from workers at home. But what is cheap? A Japanese worker is paid in yen and American workers paid in dollars. How do we compare the yen with the dollars? We need some way of transforming the one into the other. That is where the exchange rate enters in: The price of yen in terms of the dollar. Suppose that some exchange rate, Japanese goods are in general cheaper than American goods, and we will be buying much from Japan and selling little to them. But what will the Japanese do with the extra dollars they earn? They don't wanna buy American goods. By assumption, those are all dear. They wanna buy Japanese goods. But to buy Japanese goods they need yen. Calls will come in from all over the world to places like this, offering to buy yen for dollars. But there will be more offers to buy yen than to sell yen. In order to get customers, those offering to buy will have to raise the price. The price of yen in terms of dollars will go up. As you remember, that is what happened in 1977 and 1978. By late 1978 it took 50 percent more dollars to buy a given amounth of yen than it had taken a year earlier. But what happens when the price of yen in terms of dollars goes up? Japanese labor is no longer so cheap! Japanese goods are no longer so attractive to American consumers. On the other hand, American labor is no longer so dear to Japanese. American goods are more attractive to the Japanese. We will export more to them, we will import less from them. New jobs will be created in export industries to replace any jobs that might have been lost in industries competing with imports. That is how a free market and foreign exchange balances trade around the world when it is permitted to operate. As you contemplate this, you may come to agree with me, that what we need are constitutional restraints on the power of goverment to interfere with free markets in foreign exchange, in foreign trade, in many other aspects of our lives."

3) Ucuncu bolum olan "Freedom & Prosperity"i izlerken bir baktim - Abov! - sunumu vampir Ronald Reagan yapiyor. Reagan kendisi icin onceden yazilmis olan metni prompterdan okuyor ve Friedman icin "dostum" diyor. Eh, haliyle dostu olacak! Ne de olsa, bozacinin sahidi siraci! Yalniz, programlara sunucu olarak Diktator Pinoche dahil edilmemis. Niye? Pinoche'nin Reagan'dan neyi eksik? Yapimcilari siddetle kiniyorum!

Bu sefer programin sonundaki tartisma bolumunde yer alan konuklardan biri Massachusetts Universitesi'nden Samuel Bowles. Ilgili kisiler Bowles'i, Herbert Gintis ile birlikte yazdiklari ve Ayrinti yayinlari arasindan cikan "Democracy and Capitalism" kitabindan hatirlayacaklardir. Bowles, Friedman'i makineli tufek gibi elestiriyor ve bir-iki yerde resmen makaraya aliyor. Bunlardan birinde, Friedman'in onerdigi modeli elestiriyor ve modeli "demode, islemez, asiri ve anti-demokratik" olarak nitelendiriyor Ben de Friedman'in fikirlerinin "ici gecmis" oldugunu dusunuyorum. Bowles da benim gibi dusunuyormus. Demek ki, aklin yolu bir! Bowles ayni zamanda Reagan donemi Amerikan ekonomisinden de bahsediyor ve Reagan'in Friedman'in onerilerini dinleyerek Amerikan ekonomisini zora soktugunu soyluyor. Peki bizim zipir Milton ne yapiyor bunlari duyunca? - Kaciyor! Iste metin:

[29:28] Bowles: "But Milton seems to think that we have to choose between either a centrally planned society or a society in which we have markets which are basicly unregulated and so the choices in really between all or nothing. I don't think that's the choice. I think what Milton is posing for us is a model which is as unrealistic as a centrally planned model. It's outdated. It won't work. It's extreme and I think it's undemocratic. I think that we have choices in between, what Milton called the third way, a way that he said it wouldn't work, has been shown to work around the world and I think that Eastern Europe will be very ill-advised to take Milton's advice on this. Yet, the last time anybody took Milton's advice on economic policy was Ronald Reagan and Ronald Reagan has put the U.S. economy into a situation where it can't pay its bills, and it's facing mounting economic instability and difficulties."

Friedman: "Well, first of all, I utterly reject what Sam says about the results of Ronald Reagan's changes. We had a decade of extraordinary growth, increased employment in which inflation was brought down sharply. Ronald Reagan came into office at a period of a very high inflation, and so on. But this program is not about the Reagan administration. This program is about Eastern Europe, and I wanna go to Eastern Europe."

Tartismanin ilerleyen bolumunde Bowles Friedman'i resmen makarya aliyor. Snoopy'nin sahibi Charlie Brown'dan hareketle Friedman'in kapitalizm anlayisi ile dalga geciyor. Bowles soyle diyor: "Charlie Brown ve Linus'in bir limonata standi olacak ve Lucy'nin de bir limonata standi olacak. Senin kapitalizm fikrin bu iste. Ama bu bir efsane. Kapitalizm bu degil. Bizim, ayni kosullarda rekabet eden binlerce, milyonlarca kucuk firmamiz yok. Bizim, guclerini kendi lehlerine ve baskalarinin aleyhine kullanan dev endustriyel korporasyonlarimiz var." Iste metin:

[41:10] Bowles: "Milton says in the show, and I agree with him, that we have to choose between taking orders from the top down, or incentives at the bottom. Now Milton's idea of how to get incentives down at the bottom is essentially a view of an economy in which individuals, through their ownership of property, can own the results of their hard work and their innovation. Its a great idea. It doesn't exist anywhere or it can't exist. When I read your stuff Milton and when I watch you on TV, I think, you know, Milton has this idea of, you know, Charlie Brown and Linus are gonna have a lemonade stand and Lucy's gonna have another lemonade stand, and that's your idea of capitalism. But that's a myth. That's not what capitalism is. We don't have thousands and millions of little firms competing on a level playing field. We have giant industrial corporations that use their power to their own advantage and to the disadvantage of others. Then that's what you have to able to deal with if you wanna be relevant to the modern world. That's what the countries that I've talked about, Sweden, Korea, Norway, Japan, are very good at doing. Dealing with the of problem economic powers, so that the power of those institutions can be used by and large for public good. If you ignore them, with this lemonade stand capitalism myth, you're simply giving those powerful spenders of wealth and affluence free reign."

Friedman: "It's a strange thing that not a single one of the countries that you've described has a standard of living as high as of the United States with respect to the bulk of its population."

Bowles: "And the United States got its standard of living through precisely the policies that you've opposed such as protecting our industrial base from ... tariff ... subsidizig."

Bowles son cumleyi soylerken Friedman dayanamayarak araya giriyor ve ellerini kollarini sallayarak itiraz ediyor. Friedman'in itiraz ederken cikardigi miy miy seslerinden Bowles'in cumlesinin sonunu isitemedim, ama "tarife" ve "para yardimi" kelimelerini isittigime eminim. Son cumle ile Bowles tasi tam manasiyla gedigine koyuyor. Arada, Bowles calisanlarin kendi urunleri uzerinde soz sahibi olmalari gerektigini soyluyor ve dusuncesini Amerika'dan ornekler vererek destekliyor:

[44:05] "If you work at, say General Motors or IBM, you're a secretary or you're a production worker, what you are getting there is you're getting orders from the top down. You don't own your work, you don't own the results of your work. When you talk incentives from the bottom, if you wanna get incentives from the bottom you've gotta get the people who work at the bottom to own the results of their work and then to have a say how their work gonna be used. You can do that if you ... like employee ownership and employee control. That's what made Wierton Steel from almost bankruptcy to one of the most successful steel companies in the United States - employee ownership and control. The same with Columbia Aluminium, one of the most efficient aluminium companies in the United States. It went from shutdown to be a very successful company through employee ownership and employee control over their production processes. That's what I call putting incentives at the bottom where they belong, but you never advocate that."

Liberal Hareket sitesindeki arkadaslara tesekkur ediyorum. Iyi ki boyle bir siteyi bulmuslar. Bu sayede biz de, liberalizmin savunucusu olan adamlarin saglam elestiri yapan kisilerin karsisinda nasil rezil olduklarini ve savunduklari seylerin ne kadar dayanaksiz oldugunu goruyoruz. Vallaha, LH'nin bu yaptigi kamu hizmeti kapsamina giriyor! Insallah, bu turden videolar bu genc arkadaslara pesinden takilip gittikleri seylerin ne kadar yanlis oldugunu bir daha gosterir ve hayirlara vesile olur - amin!