presented yesterday Prime Minister Horst Seehofer, the final report of an expert commission future social market economy : added " The work of the Commission showed that the social market economy are not in the context of the global financial and economic crisis reinvented must, however, specifically reserved for the future Challenges should be developed. "Efficient markets would function according to Seehofer only on a strong foundation of values. It stated in the course of globalization, deregulation allegedly broken out race to be stopped.
It is unfortunate that neither Mr Seehofer nor its "expert commission" with the true contents of the conceived by Wilhelm Röpke, Walter Eucken, Friedrich August von Hayek and others, and of Ludwig Erhard and Alfred Müller-Armack largely unrealized broad social market economy have explained. Otherwise they would have realized that the outbreak of the current financial crisis is not due to the low regulation the financial markets, but on the irresponsible debt, spending and monetary policy of the G-8 countries, due above all the United States, is that an incorrect interest rate cut policy of the U.S. Federal Reserve and the ECB created a liquidity bubble that just had to burst at the moment when market participants caused by bad investments, such as the completely over-valued real estate assets identified and especially when interest rates increased again and the unrealistic basis of some financing was placed by open. The market itself is not the cause of a stock market crash. He can not cheat rather durable, but brings all the parties involved in the short or long on the bottom of the facts (see also: Time for Freedom: "On the true causes of the financial crisis," from 26.06.2009)
The idea of the social market economy is on the theories of the so-called "Ordo-liberalism" back which has in turn taken currents of the "Freiburg School of Economics" and the "Austrian school of economics". The most important representatives in the first half of the last century include Walter Eucken, Franz Böhm and in particular Hans Grossmann Doerth and the Berlin Wilhelm Röpke and Alexander Rüstow. An important Also contributed to the "Austrian" economist and Nobel laureate Friedrich August von Hayek. Hayek is a student of Ludwig von Mises, the most important representative of the Austrian School. Basis of the Ordo-liberalism is an economic system characterized by the protection of competition and individual freedom of citizens.
Ludwig Erhard applied the findings of the Ordo-liberalism, the term of the social market economy, in practice, even justified but no private school science. Among the hundreds of writings and documents in the archives of the Ludwig-Erhard-Stiftung is therefore no single textbook of social market economy. Therefore, could the be the concept of social market economy in the past decades of abuse or often filled with false content. The social market economy was often mistaken the meaning of a combination of private and governmental redistribution or excessive regulation, as is apparently also misunderstands Mr. Seehofer. The social market economy is the exact opposite of today by the politicians of the grand coalition desired "dual system" of a little free market combined with massive government activities: the word "social" for the term "social market economy" used Erhard never a limiting adjective, but to characterize a free market economy, their performance and their social results:
" This is the social meaning of market economy is that every economic success, where does he always that any benefit from the rationalization, every improvement in the performance of the best interests of all the people available is made and is a better satisfaction of consumption. "
(Ludwig Erhard, in:" Prosperity for All ", Munich 1957, new edition 1997, page 169)
" And no less clearly shown us is that prevailing economic tensions and social emergencies in particular still there, where too much state of the free creative Initiative of the people creates bonds and can reach about the effect of economic activity not to optimum effectiveness. "
(Ludwig Erhard: The economic system of free people, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6.1.1957, in: Karl Hohmann, Ludwig Erhard: Thoughts from five decades, speeches and writings, Munich 1988, page 510)
" Often there even the completely erroneous idea before, that free competition to a repression of social movements, or at least lead to economic disruption, as it is convinced that all liberal and socially-oriented professionals was just the suppression of freedom of movement yet; disturb the equilibrium of the economy and they became embroiled in increasingly desperate looser crises. If the state keeps watch over the future that does not prevent social privileges or artificial monopolies the natural balance of economic forces, but that the interplay of supply and demand is room, then the market will regulate the use of all economic forces in an optimum manner and hence those misdirection correct. "
(Ludwig Erhard, in" German economic policy. The way of the social market economy ", Munich 1962, p. 20 f.)
" Everyone is his own fortune. There is individual freedom, and this the more, the less the state presumes to spoon-feed the individual citizen or even set themselves up to his patron to do. Those that pay benefit 'the people must always expensive, because no state to give its citizens more, than he has previously taken them - and still less of the cost is inevitably more and more an end in itself degenerating social bureaucracy. Nothing is so antisocial, as a rule, than the so-called 'welfare state', which can decrease the human responsibility limp and individual performance. "
(Ludwig Erhard," On the standard of living ", Washington Post, 08/15/1958)
Erhard merit lies mainly in the fact exceeded the limits of economic theories and opened next to the translation into practical policy, new perspectives for the social functioning of a society to have. According to Erhard, the main focus of the economic policy had to be on the many facilities that are injurious to morality or to ruin and evade the freedom soil:
on the welfare state, the anonymous, the moral obligation between people and thus relativized and weakens ;
to parties and associations, the crowd in the place of private morality, and thus nullify it and
speaks to the materialistic attitude, the moral doubts Hohn and are the only money and goods as a measure of value.
If Horst Seehofer, the idea of Ludwig Erhard's social market economy will be understood correctly, he also discusses the basics of the Ordo-liberalism and focus mainly by Ludwig Erhard highly esteemed Austrian school of economics:
" For if ever a theory the signs of the time knew how to correctly interpret their findings and gave a modern economic and social policy, new impulses, then there were the thoughts of men who are today regarded as neo-or moderately liberal. You have given the economic policy more and more socio-political trends and the isolation of a mechanistic-computingful Thought solved, they have the economists taught to think in functions and made it clear that the economic life did not understand the people and peoples in isolation from her other realms and therefore not be isolated may be ordered. "
(Ludwig Erhard Karl Hohmann (Editor). Ludwig Erhard - Thoughts from five decades of speeches and writings, Munich 1988, page 696)
So who demonized neoliberalism must logically also reject Ludwig Erhard and the real social market economy . With the just-rendered quote, Ludwig Erhard contests keynsianistische trends in economics and against today prevailing theory of the so-called macro-economy. Macroeconomics tries with aggregates such as national income, consumption, saving, explain, investment etc. macroeconomic relationships in models. In uncritical use of these units, which are only abstract art greats, but it can be a significant reality of loss and the loss of the ability of the economy to provide useful services practice. Therefore, the bulk of international economists, the current financial crisis can not predict, because the real understanding of economic processes can take place only to be interpreted from the actions of individuals, as the micro-economics, especially the Austrian school has been doing for a long time. The economists of the Austrian school, have predicted as the only back in 1928 the collapse of the stock exchanges on "Black Friday" 1929 (namely von Mises and Hayek) and the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble in 2007 accurately.
It is also wrong if Seehofer and others now want to construct a contradiction between the market and morality, rather than deal with the real causes that scare today companies, banks and consumers the wrong incentives for misconduct: welfare states, their huge spending programs not with tax increases, but for decades only by currency inflation cope with all concerned citizens to convince short-term profit maximization and for investment speculation, to compensate for the otherwise inevitable inflation losses. Stable currencies without permanent loss of purchasing power would remove any future speculative bubbles, however the base.
Not the market, but politicians, government bureaucracies and central banks would need so urgently the values that they so much against the company and claim our citizens. The market does not need monitoring or restrictive morality, but rather as a moral guarantor of human behavior, as argued by Friedrich August von Hayek: "The fact that the market economy moral principles has and can only work with what I have described earlier the morale of the property, of honesty and contract compliance, which they (the people) not aware of. But until about 100 years ago it was just a common tradition that no one has doubted. "
values arise not in a vacuum, but under free market participants, for their economic success including one's own honesty and reliability to ensure compliance with contracts, in so-called" secondary virtues "as timely and complete deliveries and made mutually complimentary manners depend. Who would a restaurant visit a second time, hurl abuse at him in the head waiter and then served an inedible meal? And what restaurant would eventually hold on the market that will proceed with his guests?
Dr. Thomas Jahn, July 2009
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