The difference between Chile and the rest of the continent can be stark. When Bolivian demonstrators in October forced their president to flee the country in violent protests against globalization's unevenness, the first Starbucks was opening in Chile. Nearly half of all Brazilian workers do not have a job contract; for Chile the figure is 1 in 5. The number of Argentines living in poverty has quadrupled since 1989; over that same period, Chile has reduced the ranks of its poor by half.The whole thing is worth a look for those not well-versed in the relevant recent history."What makes Chile different from the rest of Latin America," said Manuel Riesco, an economist with the Center for National Studies of Alternative Development in Santiago, "is not that we embraced the free market more than our neighbors. What we realized is that the free market is like a car. There is no doubt that it is the best way to get you from point A to point B. But you have to steer. If you take your hands off the wheel, you will end up face-down in a ditch."
Said Dani Rodrik, professor of international economics at Harvard University: "The myth is that Chile's success is purely the result of fundamentalist free-market policies. But the truth is quite a bit messier than that. Government activism and management in Chile did not stifle the power of the free market. It unleashed the power of the free market."
--Sam Rosenfeld