B30 - History of Economic Thought: Individuals: GeneralNávrat zpět

The topic of this study is historical analysis of the construction of the Czech railway network and the role of the state in its development in comparison with economic thought of the time. The aim of this study is to present relations between the development of theoretical economic foundations and the actual railway construction in the Czech lands from the middle of the 19^th to the beginning of the 20^th century. During this time, the railway network was constructed in the shape it functions until these days. The topic is examined as a historical sequence of interactions between actual railway construction and operation and economic opinions regarding the role of the state in construction and running of railways. The history of the relationship between the state and the railway went through a few periods differing in the approach of the state to ownership and operation. We can trace the private beginnings from the 1830s, to first state railways from 1841 to 1848, to privatization and indirect state subsidies, to the victorious definite idea of solely state railways in the last third of the 19^th century. The study follows detailed discussions of the era together with connections to economic thought of the era.

Already during the financial crisis from 2007 through 2009, a growing number of scholars, laymen or media outlets blamed economics as such, at least partially, for the turmoil and subsequent economic malaise. Therefore, the debate concerning future long-term development of economics - or, more precisely, prevailing economic theory - has been intensifying. The following text outlines four possible scenarios - synthetic, evolutionary, reactionary, and revolutionary - of such a development. Each scenario is connected with a methodologist of economics or a methodologist of science, who represent it, for it is right the domain of methodology or/and philosophy of science wherein it is necessary to look for an ideological background belonging to different research traditions in economics as well as for an understanding of determining stances and worldviews of the traditions' proponents.

This study is devoted to analysis of different aspects of world oil market development and its role in further growth of individual national economies, especially in connection with the ever intensifying globalization process. The study shows individual aspects and parts of the oil market, be it production and consumption of crude oil, its territorial dislocation, including EU, and also an analysis of the impact that has the development of oil consumption on economical results of individual national economies. In the first place it analyses the connections with the growth of competition ability of companies. Further research is devoted to the establishment of crude oil price and to the most important aspects on which depends the price creation process. Supply and demand factors are also analyzed. The study comes to a conclusion that the biggest obstacle in using the crude oil will not be its availability, at least in the short run, but the ever fast increasing price. This high price will enable the use of oil only to such companies and countries that will be able to implement the oil in the production process with very high efficiency. Such conditions satisfy only products and services that are based on unique technical and scientific know-how, with high added value, or in such areas of national economies where the use of oil is unenviable.

This is the reaction on the article of Václav Klusoň "Come-Backs of Dr. Bernard Mandeville: Virtuous Knaves in Economic Transformation". I put in contrast economic thinking of B. Mandeville and A. Smith and argue that both Smith's social and moral philosophy and his economic thought is more relevant for our present time. Smith's system of natural liberty - free trade and free enterprise - brings the invisible hand of the markets to work and transform self-interests of individuals into social benefits. I doubt that knaves were becoming virtuous in the process of transformation and privatization. Rather it is the other way around: virtuous men are becoming knaves in our present social, political and economic system of excessive taxation and regulations. The state is so much involved in bureaucratic, regulative and redistributive activities that it fails to function as the guardian of law and order.

The author undertakes in his essay a risky experiment as he tries to look at the present-time-economic-transformations in the view of the great thinker of 18th century, Dr. Bernard Mandeville, who famed by his Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices and Public Benefits. The philosophy of Mandeville, as is well known, influenced besides others, F. A. Hayek and J. M. Keynes, the former by ascribing Mandeville the primacy of the idea of spontaneity in evolution and the latter by assesing luxury in promoting the spending. In the course of economic reforms the truthfullnes of the so-called Mandevill paradox has been widely afirmed; knaves were becoming virtuous and property conferred respect and authority upon the "nouveau riche".