Lucid, deeply informed, and enlivened with striking illustrations. -Noam Chomsky One economist has called Ha-Joon Chang the most exciting thinker our profession has turned out in the past fifteen years. With Bad Samaritans, this provocative scholar bursts into the debate on globalization and economic justice. Using irreverent wit, an engagingly personal style, and a battery of examples, Chang blasts holes in the World Is Flat orthodoxy of Thomas Friedman and other liberal economists who argue that only unfettered capitalism and wide-open international trade can lift struggling nations out of poverty. On the contrary, Chang shows, today's economic superpowers-from the U.S. to Britain to his native Korea-all attained prosperity by shameless protectionism and government intervention in industry. We have conveniently forgotten this fact, telling ourselves a fairy tale about the magic of free trade and-via our proxies such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization-ramming policies that suit ourselves down the throat of the developing world. Unlike typical economists who construct models of how the marketplace should work, Chang examines the past: what has actually happened. His pungently contrarian history demolishes one pillar after another of free-market mythology. We treat patents and copyrights as sacrosanct-but developed our own industries by studiously copying others' technologies. We insist that centrally planned economies stifle growth-but many developing countries had higher GDP growth before they were pressured into deregulating their economies. Both justice and common sense, Chang argues, demand that we reevaluate the policies we force on nations that are struggling to follow in our footsteps.
"Es un libro bastante interesante que trata de convencer al lector de que las políticas de libre mercado no fueron las que desarrollaron a los países. Los países ricos suelen recomendar apertura comercial libre de aranceles, desregulación de mercados y reducción del gasto público, pero no hicieron nada de eso para desarrollarse durante la "época dorada del capitalismo" durante 1945-1970. Esto es lo que el autor llama "la historia secreta del capitalismo" y como los países que actualmente son ricos no recomiendan a los emergentes lo que en verdad ellos hicieron, Ha-Joong Chang les llama "malos samaritanos". El ejemplo de Corea del Sur es bastante citado a través del libro, pues en la década de los 60's era uno de los países más pobres del mundo y la ortodoxia liberal llegó recién a fines de los 90's."