Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Why does capitalism produce such economic wonders while communism flops miserably on the same front? Note I just asked about the economic aspects, not the political side of things. I’ll pre-empt the wrongly cited counter-example: China. Sorry, but China is not a communist country in economic terms. Rory Sutherland dismisses efficiency as the critical difference between the two systems. Rather, he says: “Truly free markets trade efficiency for a costly process of market-tested innovation heavily reliant on dumb luck. The reason this inefficient process is necessary is that, though we pretend otherwise, no one knows anything about anything: most of the achievements of consumer capitalism were never planned; they are explicable only in retrospect, if at all.” And in contrast, he says: “The reason to avoid communism is not because it is inefficient, but because it tries to be too intelligent.” Too intelligent? Sutherland elaborates that communism thinks it knows what is ne...

Wuxi, the place I went in China, is around 225 km from Shanghai. It took us around 2.5 hours by taxi to get there; an average speed of 90 kmph. The 6-lane highway (at least that entire 225 km stretch) was awesome: even US highways felt bumpier by comparison! The exit ramps had clearly visible signs (in Chinese, of course); and you never got blinded by the lights of oncoming traffic on the highway. And there was a lot of highway/road construction going on everywhere; but none of it was blocking existing roads. Even more unbelievably, everyone, including trucks, followed lane discipline; horns were almost never heard. If I didn’t know I was in China, I would have sworn that I was in a Western country. We visited Shanghai over the weekend: it was a 45 minute ride in the train at 300 kmph! (It takes me about the same time to go from office in Bangalore for a measly 11 km distance). Shanghai has European style open double-decker buses for tourists; the skyline looks like Manhattan; an...