Yes, But Can the Street Do Anything Constructive?

Written by Chris Dierkes

Time's Quote of the Day for today (Oct 26 2010) reads as follows:

"Everything a government can do, the street can undo."

--SOPHIE FREBILLOT, 19, one of the hundreds of students demonstrating in Paris as the French Senate passed the final draft of a bill that raised the minimum retirement age to 62 from 60.

This statement may be true (it might not be), but two better questions come to my mind:

1. Can the street undo global markets? My read on the contemporary world is that governments are largely subservient to the market. That we live in market-states as Philip Bobbitt calls them--as opposed to nation-states where governments were dominant.

2. Can the street do anything constructive and new or can it simply undo whatever a government does? I lean towards a no, but I'm open to hearing alternative voices.

Tagged under

Latest from Chris Dierkes

Related items

More in this category: « The Wire- 100 Greatest Quotes The Emerging Over-Hype on Emerging Markets »

Join the Discussion

Commenting Policy

Beams and Struts employs commenting guidelines that we expect all readers to bear in mind when commenting at the site. Please take a moment to read them before posting - Beams and Struts Commenting Policy

2 comments

Comment Link Thursday, 28 October 2010 16:32 posted by Jim Hanson
In answer to your questions (from my perspective at least):
1. Whether you are talking about "the street" or governments or corporations or markets, at the end of the day you are talking about people. In that respect, "yes," people can undo (or rebuild) global markets. As for market-states vs. nation-states, if we really want to return to the poverty and disease and chaos of the Middle Ages then I suppose a government dominated state is OK. I generally prefer a "state" that provides fire and police protection, decent roads and national defense and leaves me pretty much alone to operate in a market of my (and others in it) making.
2. In light of #1 above, I lean toward "yes." People can be constructive. The question I am much more pessimistic about is, "Do we have the will and the guts and the determination to do anything constructive?" I lean toward no on that point.
Comment Link Saturday, 30 October 2010 06:25 posted by Chris Dierkes
Jim,

Thanks for the comment.

The market-state is a term from Philip Bobbitt which means that markets have power over states. In a nation-state, the market is definitionally held within the power of the state. [Governments, by my definition are just temporary groups that, in a democracy, win elections and hold chief positions in the state apparatus. Governments rise and fall, states tend to say].

The US (by this definition) was a nation-state during the Depression, WWII, and into the Cold War Era. There was a social compact and so on.

Now, in places like Chicago, California, and so on, with the dominance of markets, governments are having difficulty meeting budgets are selling off previously government-controlled entities. I think that trend is likely to continue. Though I don't think it takes us back to the Middle Ages, there may in fact be dangers of a kind of neo-feudalism in such an arrangement.