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Dan Bromley wrote: "Markets are not ends but instruments.  For some purposes  
they can be agreeable instruments.  For other purposes they can be most  
disagreeable."  I would welcome further explantion from you, Dan: what  
purposes?  "Agreeable"?.... 
 
On the other hand, Governments too can be viewed as instruments....but the  
interesting question is: of which set of interests in what countries and at  
what times? 
 
I have just returned from my first visit to a Central Asian country, and Dan's  
use of the phrase "those whose current social and economic advantage is  
reinforced and validated by the existing structure of institutional  
arrangements" is certainly redolent of this and perhaps all other countries in  
the former Soviet Union and even perhaps of other so-called "developing"  
countries.  In "developed" countries, on the other hand, government seems to  
function at least a little more effectively in the medium term as a means of  
moderating between various groups of interests (pure capitalists, wage-earners  
who are also capitalists, "mere" wage earners (i.e. wage earners without  
capital), those who are unemployed and perhaps unemployable, those needing  
capital for various purposes, those who would like to encourage investment in  
relatively "safe" areas of the economy versus those who would like to encourage  
investment in more "risky" areas of the economy, those interested in the  
environment, those intersted in the development of other countries, et al).   
 
Can any HES participants from Comparative Institutional Analysis or other areas  
help me to understand whether I am completely off the track in the previous  
paragraph? 
 
prabhu guptara 
 
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