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Foreigners are ridiculed as incapable of understanding our circumstances or our "plantation" experience, having not been born here or lived here. All paradigms other than those of native origin are automatically dismissed as irrelevant and/or harmful.
As they would remind us, the point is not to understand the world but to change it. The advocates of this dictum trumpet it from the safety of academia, untempered by involvement in pragmatic policy-making and free to second-guess those who are. But the test of theory is the results which follow the application of its policy prescriptions.
Ironically, those countries where the ideas of this much vaunted group of indigenous economists have informed policy, eg Guyana, Jamaica and Grenada, have the worst economic records in the Caribbean. While it is mono-causal, there are many who would argue that Jamaica is yet to recover from the period in which we seized the commanding heights of policy-making.
Their policy recommendations include a lead role for the state, nationalisation of the local operations of multinational corporations, trade liberalisation is always harmful, unilateral rescheduling of external debt, inappropriateness of IMF policy advice, foreign investment results in exploitation, regional economic integration culminating in political federation, national markets do not work, the world market operates to the benefit of the rich, globalisation perpetuates the development-underdevelopment duality, developed countries have neo-colonial motives when engaging the Caribbean, foreign capital is a vehicle for corporate imperialism, and national self-reliance is best achieved by production planning.
Continued dependency on this paradigm does not change the world, instead it perpetuates the development of underdevelopment and persistent poverty in the Caribbean.
Perhaps we in Jamaica can lead the region away from this useful pass.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/edito...ECONOMISTS.asp
Intellectual Ghetto.. dem know who dem is...
As they would remind us, the point is not to understand the world but to change it. The advocates of this dictum trumpet it from the safety of academia, untempered by involvement in pragmatic policy-making and free to second-guess those who are. But the test of theory is the results which follow the application of its policy prescriptions.
Ironically, those countries where the ideas of this much vaunted group of indigenous economists have informed policy, eg Guyana, Jamaica and Grenada, have the worst economic records in the Caribbean. While it is mono-causal, there are many who would argue that Jamaica is yet to recover from the period in which we seized the commanding heights of policy-making.
Their policy recommendations include a lead role for the state, nationalisation of the local operations of multinational corporations, trade liberalisation is always harmful, unilateral rescheduling of external debt, inappropriateness of IMF policy advice, foreign investment results in exploitation, regional economic integration culminating in political federation, national markets do not work, the world market operates to the benefit of the rich, globalisation perpetuates the development-underdevelopment duality, developed countries have neo-colonial motives when engaging the Caribbean, foreign capital is a vehicle for corporate imperialism, and national self-reliance is best achieved by production planning.
Continued dependency on this paradigm does not change the world, instead it perpetuates the development of underdevelopment and persistent poverty in the Caribbean.
Perhaps we in Jamaica can lead the region away from this useful pass.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/edito...ECONOMISTS.asp
Intellectual Ghetto.. dem know who dem is...
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