El gran debate económico del siglo XX

Me pareció muy interesante y claro este discurso de Steve Forbes sobre por qué, a pesar de los resultados demoledores, la economía de mercado y la democracia deben seguir pidiendo disculpas en el mundo, mientras que los colectivismos de todo tipo siguen gozando de excelente salud y no deben explicar absolutamente nada de nada. Yo no seré Forbes ni mucho menos pero creo que tiene mucho de tara cultural:

The great economic debate of the twentieth century was between collectivists and free-marketers. In one sense, the free-marketers won: When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, it was widely acknowledged that Soviet socialism had been a catastrophic, not to say murderous, failure. But in another sense, the debate continues. Democratic capitalism still has not vanquished the idea of collectivism. Far from it.

At the beginning of the last century, free markets seemed to be on the ascendancy everywhere. But two events gave collectivism its lease on life. The first was World War I. In addition to the slaughter—and to breeding the ideologies of communism, state fascism, Nazism, and even the Islamic fascism we are battling today—World War I served as an intoxicating drug to those in the West who believed that a handful of people in government could manage affairs better than the messy way in which free peoples tend to do so. Massive increases in government powers, coupled with massive increases in taxation, gave many the idea that you can achieve massive increases in production by commandeering the financial resources of society.