Nacionalizaciones

Johan Norberg sobre las nacionalizaciones en Bolivia (hablo en plural porque esto recién empieza):

HERE WE GO AGAIN:

Evo Morales´ socialisation of the natural gas companies will make Bolivians rich he says. It´s not the first time Bolivian leaders say and do that, this is the third socialisation in 70 years. Every time companies begin to invest in technology and knowhow, the government punishes them and change all the terms. 70 years ago, Bolivia was almost as rich as Spain. Today Spain is about seven times richer.

Here is Mario Vargas Llosa´s classical explanation of the problem, when he talked about his own Peru:

"In France, Sweden, or England, a public enterprise maintains a certain autonomy in relation to those who hold political power: it belongs to the state; and its administration, its personnel, and its functioning are more or less safe from the abuse of governmental power. But in an underdeveloped country, exactly as in a totalitarian one, the government is the state and those in power oversee it as though it were their own private property, or, rather , their spoils. Public enterprises are useful for providing cushy jobs for the protégés of those in power, for feeding the people under patronage, and for making shady deals. Such enterprises soon turn into bureaucratic swarms paralyzed by the corruption and inefficiency introduced into them by politics. There is no danger that they will go broke; almost always they are monopolies protected against competition and their life is guaranteed indefinetly thanks to subsidies, that is to say, the taxpayer´s money." (A Fish in the Water, 1994)


Un petit comentario, si me permiten. Norberg sostiene que los bolivianos son sólo 7 veces más pobres que los españoles. Deben estar saltando en una pata.