This article argues that a high degree of relative state autonomy and ideology, while necessary, was not sufficient to explain fully the change from import-substitution industrialization to an open, free-market economy in Chile. A comparison across three distinct policy periods in authoritarian Chile reveals that shifting coalitions of businessmen and landowners, with varying power resources, also played an important part in the outcome. This approach does not seek to vitiate other interpretations of economic change in Chile and elsewhere. The question is not so much which factor is most important, but how and when the different factors matter.
el ladrillo chile pdf free
CHICAGO BOYS is their story from their student days through the dictatorship, told by the Chicago Boys themselves. Could their program for 'economic freedom,' such a drastic restructuring of the Chilean economy, only have been implemented by an authoritarian regime? What were they willing to do to achieve their goals? And how do they see the long-term results today?
The transformations produced by the implementation of the neo-liberal economic model in Chile were also put into practice through a total manipulation of urban land. In 1973, the military dictatorship drafted a document in Chile called El ladrillo (The Brick), which laid out the basis of the Chilean military government's economic policy.[19] Through Decrees with the force of law, a series of urban policies radically transformed the physical shape of Santiago de Chile along with its social structures.
The central claim of the new urban development was to free the urban limits of the city of Santiago, which made urban land potentially limitless[20]. Regulations that used to limit urban boundaries were now opened to an uncontrolled process of urban expansion that treated land as an infinite resource.[21] As a consequence, land ownership was gradually settled as a social aspiration; this accelerated the transfer of land titles from state agencies to private individuals. Thus, the city's inhabitants were channeled into economic subjects.[22] The increase in the price of land in central areas and the possibility of exploiting it for economic purposes eventually displaced the inhabitants of these areas to the periphery in new urban areas defined by the expansion of urban land.
In this article I will be looking for three things. First, to affirm the political nature of the application of the rules of free competition. Second, and counter to the aforementioned, to challenge the thesis that antitrust is a purely technical discipline, where there is no room for substantive considerations. Third, to draw attention to the risks of accepting the position that a purely technical antitrust regulation is even possible.
I want to start by clarifying what I am trying and what I am not trying to demonstrate in this study. First, I will try to show that there are several objectives that may be pursued by the institutionality of free competition, and that choosing one of these is necessary and constitutes a political decision. Regarding what I do not seek to do, I do not seek to argue in favor of a certain conception of free competition, but rather to show the available options.
As Stucke says, the battle for free competition starts with its goals.123 This is so for two reasons. First, by the way in which the per se rule and the rule of reason are applied. That distinction, which is repeatedly referred to in free competition law, relates to what has to be proven in order to sanction a particular conduct. The per se rule applies to generally anti-competitive behaviors that are sanctioned only for their occurrence. In contrast, the rule of reason applies to behaviors that could have both pro-competitive and anti-competitive effects. Thus, in order to sanction behavior that falls under the rule of reason, a certain conduct must fall within the catalog of prohibitions, but it must also be demonstrated that its execution, in balance, is more anti-competitive than competitive.
A second reason why determining the objective of free competition is important, is the indeterminate language that antitrust rules typically have. Thus, the broad mandate and vague language of antitrust rules implies that their application depends on an underlying normative vision.127
In this regard, it is important to consider the fact that after the reform made by Law 19,911, our law states that its objective is to defend free competition. At first glance, this concept would seem clear enough to deal with the aforementioned problems.
To understand the above we can draw on Rawls' distinction between the concept of justice and its various conceptions. In discussing justice, Rawls assumes that we all share a concept of it, but that we disagree in our conceptions of it because we interpret this concept according to different principles.130 The same is true in this context. Thus, there is a concept of free competition, which brings together several conceptions, and between these different conceptions there are differences that are due to the political elaboration of this concept.
Along these lines, the general concept of free competition means that the provision of economic goods must be governed by the market, being the intervention of the State one that occurs at discreet moments and that is justified in the common good. As Baker says, we are somewhere in the middle between direct regulation and laissez faire.131
In this regard, the different existing conceptions are recognized by comparative practice (as we will see below) and also by the Tribunal for the Defense of Free Competition (TDFC), who has said that the protection of free competition implies defending: allocative efficiency,135 dynamic efficiency,136 the opportunity to compete, 137 the competitive process,138 or consumer welfare.139
As for the history of the discipline and the different objectives it has pursued, in our context Mario Ybar makes a clear synthesis. He places its origins in American law, specifically in the Sherman Act. According to Ybar, in this regulatory scheme there was a transposition of Jeffersonian democratic ideals into economic reality, which led to the need to erect a society of equal and independent producers as a way to avoid unequal distribution of wealth and the inherent corruption of political power that follows from economic concentration. Therefore, in its origins this regulation sought to protect political and economic freedom from economic concentration, which it did by promoting more atomized markets.142 Thus, the legislators who enshrined the Sherman Act had the express political goal of preventing economic autocracy.143
Regarding this position, the most skeptical reader might believe that this is nothing more than the ex post rationalization of populist sentiments present at the time of the creation of antitrust regulations (populist sentiments that are nothing more than an expression of resentment towards big business146). Therefore, I think it is worth referring to similar concerns that an author who almost everyone would be willing to take seriously also shares: John Rawls. I would like to concentrate on his reasons for defending property-owning democracy, a regime in which underlying institutions seek to disperse wealth and ownership over capital in order to prevent a small group of society from controlling the economy, and indirectly, political life.147 This is so because Rawls believed that the prevailing economic and social inequalities are currently so great that those with greater wealth control political life and create legislation and social policies that advance their interests.148 With this type of democracy, Rawls sought to safeguard the just value of political equality and respond to the objection that equal political freedom in a democratic state is only formal.149
If competition is a process of discovery, then, by definition, the results of this discovery are not predictable (...) The lesson that follows from this is that the law of free competition should not be designed to evaluate future market outcomes, which cannot be done reliably, but the preconditions of competition must be protected.157
After this detour we can now return to the history of antitrust. After the enshrinement of the Sherman Act, a war of philosophies raged over how to apply its regulations. 166 Thus, from the beginning there were various positions, such as those that sought to protect democracy from economic autocracy, those that sought to protect the competitive process, and those that sought to protect economic freedom. However, as this ideological battle progressed, the institutionality of antitrust moved away from its initial objectives because during the course of the twentieth century (especially from 1970 onwards) it was found that an excessive atomization of the market could be inefficient, which in turn could lead to the interests of consumers and competitors not going hand in hand.167
Within the school that privileges consumer welfare there are a number of subdivisions. First are those who inaugurated this trend, the authors of the Chicago School. This school has had profound influence on this debate, influence that started with a group of economists and lawyers that included Aaron Director, Milton Friedman and George Stigler. 170 This school advocated both descriptive and normative changes in free competition. On the one hand, descriptively, the theory involved accepting a new set of assumptions about how companies behave. On the other hand, from a normative perspective, a republican theory of antitrust that was concerned with limiting the power of companies was replaced by a neoliberal theory that claimed that the objective of antitrust was economic efficiency rather than controlling and dispersing private power.171 Thus, according to the Chicago School, authorities should limit themselves to sanctioning and repressing those behaviors and transactions that result in a reduction in the quantity of goods and services produced, increasing their final prices.172 Therefore, in the absence of concrete evidence that a particular behavior leads to economic inefficiency, it was better to let markets operate on their own,173 even if there might be other considerations that went beyond economic efficiency. 2ff7e9595c
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