Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Herschelkrustofsky (talk | contribs) at 16:06, 13 March 2006 (→American System). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Is "Voluntarism" supposed to be volontarisme? -- Beland 00:20, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You make a good point. I had the same thought, in fact, also that I've never seen either dirigisme or dirigiste ever used in English without surrounding quotations indicating that it is a foreign, i.e. French, term. Ditto for dirigism and dirigist spellings: never seen those at all.

I don't find any of these variants -- with or without the terminal "e" -- in my Webster's American Dictionary. They are in the OED Online, however: most of the examples there use surrounding quotations, but there are some which do not -- for both terminal "e" and non. Also "dirigistic".

So I guess we're stuck with the French term, in our ecumenical English / Américain. OK with me, as the phenomenon it describes is pretty common and I can't think of a better English term.

--Kessler 23:30, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

American System

Advocates of the American System have been adding links to that article in a number of unreleated articles. The three elements of the AS were high tariffs, infrastructure improvemtns, and a national bank. I see only one of those three elements in this article. Can proponents of the link please provide a noteworthy source who connects them? Thanks, -Will Beback 04:21, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

You seem to be committed to a reductionist approach in trying to understand these topics. The American System is not defined by components x, y, and z, but rather by an overarching idea that generates those components. If you look at the intro to Dirigisme, you will find that it says that "Dirigisme... is an economic term designating an economy where the government exerts strong directive influence.

While the term has been applied occasionally to centrally planned economies, where the government effectively controls production and allocation of resources (in particular, to certain socialist economies where the national government owns the means of production), it originally had neither of these meanings when applied to France, and generally designates a mainly capitalist economy with a strong economic participation by government."

This introduction could just as easily describe the American System, and it also makes clear that the term Dirigism may be used to describe economies other than that of France, answering an objection that you have made in other locations. Because of the obvious kinship of the ideas, it is perfectly legitimate to direct readers from one article to the other; the American System (economics) article references Colbert as one of the inspirations for the American System. And this article also refers readers to Mixed Economy, for similarly legitimate reasons. --HK 16:06, 13 March 2006 (UTC)