Planning for National Development: An Agenda Guided by the Socioeconomic System’s Social Philosophy

Abstract

The idea of sovereignty, which involves self determination, is undermined with each suggestion for harmonization of socioeconomic systems and the globalization of trade, which is deemed to be inevitable. Being able to trade voluntarily with any country is highly desirable, but having to transform one’s way of life — from one that is desirable to one that is not desirable — is a serious problem. In the interest of social harmony and social welfare, each country has to start out with its own social philosophy. Some countries wholeheartedly desire the free market to determine the goods and services that are to be produced, the number of unemployed workers, the investment in human capital, the rate of interest and so on. Other countries, however, are coerced in overt and covert ways to adopt the free market system although that system will not serve the needs of the citizenry of those countries. To say that the free market provides the answer for all socioeconomic systems is to ignore the fact that the free market is blind and indifferent to human needs. The unconditional requirement, that this system be adopted by developing countries, violates the rights of those sovereign nations to choose a mode of operation that would foster their desired development without infringing on the rights of other countries.