Letters to the Editor
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state control of the economy
has had a few successes. You identify one. It has a much longer list of failures.
And, what private company in their right mind would compete against an organization backed by the deep pockets of a sovereign nation? Boeing is doing it against Airbus but they are a very established company.
As you inadvertently note, the power to tax is the power to destroy, not promote. Not identified as manufacturing in Korea? Hello, 20% extra tax bite. You may like the idea of governments making business decisions but, then again, you're not in business.
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Boeing?
You have to be joking. How many zillions in taxpayer dollars flow to Boeing every year in the form of padded defense contracts? Not to mention all the subsidies our airline industry receives from the government, which in turn helps keep Boeing afloat. Boeing receives as much - or more - state support than outfits like Airbus.
At least Europeans are honest enough to admit they have socialist governments, and manage their system accordingly. The rightwing and libertarian fruitcakes here in America blather on about our supposed free market, all the while ignoring literally hundreds of billions of dollars worth of corporate welfare doled out by Washington, state and local governments every year.
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State Intervention is Like Advertising
I've always felt like state intervention is very akin to advertising when it does work. If no state nurtured nascent industries then the free markets should be able to properly determine where and when those industries mature. However like an heavily advertised product, the country that chooses to nurture a particular industry will often succeed to the detriment of other countries who choose not to intervene. Is it fair? Not sure, but it's certainly how the game is played.
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The proper role of the state?
So what is the proper role of the state? This article implies that nurturing pet industries is the proper role, and that SK's "success" in maintaining cartoon studios is evidence of what can be achieved when the state fills this role.
If that is the assertion being made here, then I'd like two issues to be addressed:
1) What evidence is there that these cartoon studios would have left South Korea in the absence of these subsidies?
2) What evidence is there that SK's policies favoring cartooning haven't displaced other activities that would have produced equal or greater value for SK society?
The essential problem with these sorts of programs is that any society has limited resources, so that by dedicating those resources to any particular activity, you are necessarily depriving those resources from a different activity. The fact that the government is able to direct economic resources is not surprising, nor inherently praiseworthy. What would be impressive is if it could be demonstrated that this subsidy program makes use of resources that would have otherwise have gone to waste.
If this gain in efficiency can't be demonstrated, then our default assumption should be that this program simply produced another layer of bureaucracy (which costs $), without any benefit.
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So if the 'State' wanted to develop the Unicorn Fart industry
Or say, solar power or algae powered ethanol or growable replacement human organs, that would be a bad thing. Ok thanks for clearing that up.
By the by hippies, almost all flat screens come from Korea now because the gubmint determined that attracting that investment was valuable. This has resulted in 25-40% price reductions per year.
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Wake up
The US government subsidizes multitudes of industries, not only in padded contracts to Boeing (re Sunspot) but also real subsidies, veiled handouts, beneficial legislation and, yes, tax breaks to the auto industry, gas and oil, corporate agriculture, etc. The power of 'The State' is alive and well in Washington, promoting certain legacy industries while ignoring, blocking and starving upcoming others. (alternative energy, software, environmental science, advanced medical research, etc.)
My question is if, for example, the congress wanted to save programming jobs from going to Pakistan, et al. (what? oh, already gone) couldn't they have turned their largesse towards Silicon Valley and funded math and science programs, given startups some tax breaks, something else? Could it be because the legacy industrial base has started to take government support for granted, even feel entitled to it? Could this be the whole source of the myopic long range planning of so many of these dinosaurs, the guaranteed support? Just wondering.
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Anime and the state
As an out-of-the-closet anime fan, I have scratched my head about Korea for years. As far as I know, Korea does the gruntwork on most traditional (i.e., not-Pixar-ish) animation projects now - including American anime-lookalike productions like "Avatar: the Last Airbender" and "Boondocks".
What is curious is that Korea, again, as far as I know, has yet to produce a widely recognized anime product that is a Korean production. Korea has Roughtrade Studio, but I am not aware of a Korean equivalent to Sunrise Studio, Studio Ghibli or Gainax or a Korean Hayao Miyazaki or Satoshi Kon. Korea has the talent. They have a rich history and culture to mine for source material, as they have already done with appeal throughout Asia in the form of live action "dramas" (sort of like soap operas in the US - but with a broader audience and appeal. Anime should, by rights, belong to Korea by now. Why doesn't it?
-Ulysses
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Other Asian animators
FWIW, Korea isn't the only Asian nation doing animation for US studios. Cuckoo's Nest in Taiwan has been in the business for a long time and has worked with a lot of people over the years (see: http://www.wangfilm.com.tw/friend.php). Nickelodeon is also currently working with at least one studio in China (sorry, don't know the name). On the other hand, Korean studios seem to do a great deal more work than those in Taiwan and China, and, if industry gossip is any indication, they do it better as well.
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Government intervention - so what?
The underlying assumption of several of the responses to this article seems to be - government expenditure: bad - private sector expenditure: good.
The government expenditure of most advanced countries is around 40% of GDP (even in neo-liberal US it's over 30% and heading for 40% if government-subsidised wars in Iraq and Iran are the way of the future).
Is this a bad trend for modern economies? Given the evidence of the past 100 years probably not - it's more a sign that modern economies are too complex to be left solely to the market. Simple non-intervening government was okay for the victorians but citizens of the 21st century make greater service demands of their states.
Rather than face this fact the current US political discourse seems to demand that this obvious truth is ignored. The result? Instead of making a serious effort to re-tool government to meet greater 21st century public service demands, it is left to become distorted and ineffectual - with the end result that most citizens are getting a seriously bum deal from their tax dollar.