Sobre el independentismo

de Tyler Cowen, ex alumno de Mas Colell (Conselleil de economía de la Generalitat) dice que sus modelos que explicaba en Harvard predecían que los movimientos independentistas acaban mal. Dice que Cataluña NO es El Tíbet (que sí tiene razones para desear independizarse de los chinos), y que la única razón que ve para la movida al abismo es leninista, del tipo "cuanto peor mejor". Sospecha que aquel buen profesor de antaño es el paradigma perfecto del que se ha dejado abducir por los argumentos tribales,

Andreu Mas-Colell calls for Catalonian secession

by Tyler Cowen on October 31, 2012 at 5:12 pm in Current Affairs, History, Law, Political Science | Permalink

The article, in Spanish, is here. He refers to staying in Spain as “el camino de la decadencia.” By the way, he is now the finance minister of Catalonia.

He taught me Ph.d Micro I at Harvard, so it’s too bad he wants to wreck both Spain and Europe, and for so little in return. Didn’t one of his theorems suggest this was a bad idea? It’s not as if Catalonia is treated like Tibet. (Haven’t I spent a few nice days walking around Barcelona in my time? Didn’t Air Genius Gary Leff get a decent meal at El Bulli? Didn’t they once make a young people’s movie about the place in which no one has to do any work?) Don’t we have bigger problems to worry about? How easily does he think negotiations for separation can go, especially with entire eurozone deals at stake and a Spanish history of sending in troops? He mentions that the territory is subjected to «humillación constante» de España. Maybe he’s been misquoted, but from what I see I take this as a paradigm example of how a really smart person can be taken in by rather primitive tribal arguments.

The only way to defend this move is a kind of Leninist “things must get worse before they get better” approach to the eurozone. Even if that is true, this hardly seems like the smoothest way of traversing that path.