질서자유주의와 한국의 경제 질서

Abstract

Although the polarization of wealth already existed in Korea, the polarization has become more serious in Korea, since the financial crisis. Especially, the scope of polarization has been extended to generation, enterprise, worker, housing, child care and so on. It seems that the growing polarization of problems becomes an obstacle to prevent promoting sustainable growth of Korea. From this point of view, we has grown very attentive to ordoliberalism. Ordo means the market needs an economic order to maintain a healthy level of competition. To do so, the state should be allowed to intervene the market. This is the basic thought and theory of ordoliberalism. Ordoliberalism differs from other schools of liberalism. The state should form an economic order instead of directing economic processes, and two negative examples ordoliberals used to back their theories were socialism and laissez-faire liberalism. For example, even though socialism does not admit the private property and free trade of means of production, ordoliberalism admit those. Ordoliberalism was a major influence of the economic model developed in the post-war West Germany. Ordoliberalism in Germany became known as the social market economy. This paper is to take a general view of ordoliberalism, and then to drew its implications of economic order for Korea in terms of taking care of the polarization of problems. The four implications are as follows. Firstly, ordoliberalism is more preferable than laissez-faire liberalism in these days of Korea. During the period of the rapid economic growth, the Korean economy emphasized on effectiveness ideologically based on laissez-faire liberalism. The results of effectiveness are the polarization of wealth and an increase in hiring irregular workers which prevent the sustainable economic growth. Secondly, the basic principle of the economic order is the market competition. Also, the state takes active measures to foster competition. The economic order helps social integration. The central tenet of ordoliberalism is that government should regulate markets in such a way that market outcomes approximate the theoretical outcome in a perfectly competitive market. In order words, ordoliberalism theory holds that public policy should guided by the imperative of building a competitive market economy through upholding a set of credible rules and institutions. Thirdly, in terms of preventing social friction which is a disincentive of sustainable growth, the policy should be a positive discrimination. It is impossible for someone who does not have an market power to compete with someone who has a market domination power. Therefore, the state based on ordoliberalism has to take care of second-class citizen and enterprise. Lastly, it is significant for all economic players to recognize the important of public interest instead of private interest. If a economic player pursues the private interest and then holds the economic power, the state should not only intervene in the market but also violate personal liberty. Therefore, all economic players agree with that the public interest should connect directly with the private interest.