Systemic Change: The Delicate Mixture of Intentions and Spontaneity
In this paper I shall not present a more or less standard and descriptive summary ofthe current stage ofthe transformationprocess in my country and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe. I find it appropriate to defend the achieved results because, in spite of all existing problems, this historic transformation process has been—in principle—successful. Nevertheless, it is our task to understand more deeply the fascinating social mechanism that makes such a process possible and to describe the delicate interplay of the political, social and economic factors at work. My theoretical background and my practical experience tell me that systemic change—and that is what we have been undergoing while dismantling communism in our countries—is an evolutionary process and not an exercise in applied economics or political science. It is based on a very complicated mixture of planned and unplanned, of intended and unintended events, or, to put it differently, on a mixture of intentions and spontaneity. By participating in such a process we have opened another chapter in the never completed book devoted to the study of the relative role of human action and human design in the history of mankind, the book devoted to the study of “made orders” and “catalaxies”—to use well-known Hayekian terms. I hope we can add something to that study. We may confirm that successful transformation isnot the result of detailed reform blueprints in the hands ofomnipotent reform politicians. Rather, success depends on the unconstrained activity of human beings together with “modest
Politická ekonómia slovenského kapitalizmu: inštitucionálna a evolučná perspektíva
The introductory parts of the paper analyse development of a local variety of capitalism in Slovakia from the institutional and evolutionary perspective. In early transition period privatisation policies were aimed at development of a liberal version of capitalism, based on fluid capital markets. These policies were confronted with institutional legacies of previous regimes. Privatisation, however, had major impact on structure of capital ownership and management. Next chapters compare contemporary Slovak capitalism with varieties found in other OECD economies. Major elements of institutional framework (labour market, business and financial environments) are subject to factor analysis. OECD member countries are compared via index of market coordination. Slovakia appears to be a market economy with middle levels of strategic market coordination and similar to Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Reliance on bank finance and dual economy are another distinctive features of the contemporary Slovak capitalism.
A Study on Greenhouse Automatic Control System Based on Wireless Sensor Network
The system proposed in this paper collects temperature of leaves and humidity on leaves of crop. As well as greenhouse environmental information such as temperature, humidity, etc. Crop diseases, especially, have deep relationship not only with indoor environmental factors but also with humidity lasting time on leaves and temperature of leaves. Accordingly, monitoring crop itself is as important as monitoring indoor environments. Using these collected greenhouse environmental data, indoor environments can be more effectively controlled, and monitoring crop itself can contribute to improve productivity and to prevent crops from damages by blight and harmful insects. In addition, it will be possible for farmers to do control plant growth through closely studying relationship between indoor environmental information and monitored information on crop itself. Collected data can be stored to database either in server installed in greenhouse or to remote server. It is made possible to collect information and control effectively and automatically greenhouse in the site or from a remote place through web browser. System components are: temperature sensor, humidity sensor, leaf temperature sensor, leaf humidity sensor, Zigbee based wireless sensor node, relay nodes for automatic control, and data server to store greenhouse information. The system is implemented using low power wireless components, and easy to install.