Democratization

“That democratization has never closely approached its theoretical limits, either in the government of the state or in the government of other institutions, is revealed in the three great historical movement toward democratizing the state.”

“The democratic process in governing a country is not necessarily enhanced by democratizing subsidiary parts of the process.”

“Even in a democratic country, it appears, nondemocratic forms of authority might sometimes be tolerable, perhaps actually desirable”

“Can the international monetary history of the second half of the twentieth century be understood as the further unfolding of Polanyian dynamics, in which democratization again came into conflict with economic liberalization in the form of free capital mobility and fixed exchange rates? Or do recent trends toward floating rates and monetary unification point to ways of reconciling freedom and stability in the two domains?”

“Talked at lunch with a gentleman just returned from Japan, who told me some disturbing things about the influences behind our policies of extreme democratization and de-concentration of economic life in Japan.Of all the failures of United States policy in the wake of World War II, history will rate as the most grievous our failure to approach realistically the responsibilities of power over the defeated nations which we ourselves courted by the policy of unconditional surrender.”

“Democratization of commerce is based on everyone having the right to exercise their roles as micro consumers, micro producers, micro entrepreneurs, micro investors, and micro innovators. Access to information removes the first impediment to building this brave, new world. Information asymmetry has always been at the heart of poverty.”