Another Volley For Free Enterprise

It seems that 2012 is the year for making the moral case for free enterprise, for me at least. I read Arthur C. Brooks' book The Battle earlier this year and had a chance to attend a book event in San Francisco and meet him. After the last four years it is definitely the right time to be arguing for free markets. The stakes are high.

This book review I came across from RJ Moeller, whom I follow on Twitter. The book is by Rev. Robert Sirico, head of The Acton Institute, and it's called Defending the Free Market: A Moral Case for a Free Economy. Moeller's makes Sirico out to be a person who is intelligent, wise (not the same thing), and moderate. He seems like a person who actually puts his knowledge towards a productive end. This will be added to my monstrously large Nook library and I hope I can get to it soon. Enjoy,

http://valuesandcapitalism.com/dialogue/economics/rev-robert-sirico%E2%80%99s-moral-case-free-economy

Enough With The Cliches!

Jonah Goldberg is one of my favorite authors/pundits. If you don't follow news and politics much then this is the one guy you should follow. And anyone from any part of the political spectrum can have fun reading his work. He's an intellectual heavyweight but he can talk about the current issues using metaphors and images plucked from pop culture. People who are very political tend to take themselves too seriously and much of what's written and said is melodramatic. Goldberg keeps his sanity by injecting humor into his commentary. He seems to know that most people don't care about what happens in politics and he has an outsider's perspective that I appreciate.

Here he talks about his current book, Tyranny of Cliches, a book about all the platitudes that he hears from the left. He takes them apart one by one. He also talks a little about his first book, Liberal Fascism. Enjoy,

The Executive Fraternity

I haven't read this book yet but it looks very interesting. The ongoing political debates are often very partisan and meant to score political points. This book gets behind the scenes of the partisanship and gives us a glimpse of what this unique group of men share. Here is a great interview by a good friend who runs a fantastic program.

And here's a review from WaPo:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book-review-the-presidents-club-by-nancy-gibbs-and-michael-duffy/2012/04/27/gIQAgxX2lT_story_1.html

Mysteries of the Aleppo Codex

I came across an interesting book review for an interesting (I hope) book about the oldest copy of the Hebrew bible-the Aleppo Codex. It traces back to two scribes living by the Sea of Galilee in the 10th century who wanted to create a copy of the bible that would be a template for future generations. It then traveled to Jerusalem, Egypt, and finally arriving in the Syrian city of Aleppo where it stayed for 600 years. In the 1950's it makes its way back to Jerusalem but a controversy arises over how it got there. Aleppo's rabbi's contend that the codex was taken by Itzhak Ben-Zvi, who smuggled it out of Aleppo when the Jewish quarter was being plundered in riots, and given to the Israeli gov't without their permission. Ben-Zvi happens to be the second Prime Minister of Israel-an interesting aside. 

Matti Friedman, the author of The Aleppo Codex, investigates this story and also the mystery of what happened to the missing pages of the text, about 200 pages or 40% of the document.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303918204577448610210896018.html

Churchill: The Literary Minister

I've always found Churchill to be an interesting person in history. He is one big walking set of contradictions and maybe that's what I identify with in him. I do admire his literary skills and tremendous amount of writing that he published. I read his first volume of Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples and that is the way history should be written. He inserts his bias unashamedly but still remains quite fair to the people and events he records.

This review in the Wall Street Journal is for Mr. Churchill's Profession by Peter Clarke, also author or Liberty's Exiles. Clarke writes about Churchill's literary career and its significance as a source of income. There's more to learn about the book which I won't get into here, so enjoy.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303360504577408463241458658.html?mod=WSJ_Books_LS_Books_8

The Decline And Fall Of The West?

In How The West Was Lost, Dambisa Moyo argues that the West is at a tipping point after 50 years of poor, short-term policy decisions that have brought it to a point where there are dangerously high numbers of unskilled, unemployed workers and major structural problems in the economy and gov't. She sounds the alarm that we are on a path to severely diminished status as a second world economy. There seems to be much consensus about the problems she lays out in her book but not as much about her proposed solutions. A lot of people are uncomfortable with her suggestion that the West should adopt protectionist policies to buy time to solve these structural problems. She also says that a debt default would not hurt the U.S. as much as it would the rest of the world. From her interview on BBC HARDtalk:

And part 2:

Brooks on The Road to Freedom

A few posts down I've reviewed Brooks' previous book, The Battle. In this video he talks about his current book, The Road to Freedom. There's some overlap in material but I'd say that the current book is an elaboration of the end of The Battle. He really focuses in on the failure to defend free enterprise by making the moral case for free markets. I look forward to hearing him speak on his book when he comes to the Bay Area in California.

Thomas Sowell on Intellectuals and Society

Thomas Sowell is one of the best writers in my opinion. He has a unique ability to take complex subjects and write about them in layman's terms. He reminds me of those great teachers I had growing up who challenged me and pushed me to my limits. You've had them too. They're the ones who get you thinking and asking questions. You realize that you've only scratched the surface and that there's more to what you thought you figured out. That's Tom Sowell.

Brooks on why he wrote The Battle

In this vignette Arthur C. Brooks talks about why he wrote his book, The Battle, and explains what the book is really about. This is the why of the book and if you feel the same way then you will probably benefit from reading it.

The Moral Case For Free Enterprise

     The recent financial crisis has set off a new battle in the culture war between free markets and big gov’t. It is a struggle to shape the nation’s identity and future. While a majority of Americans favor the free enterprise system the arguments made in its defense often fail to show why we are better off with free markets. Its proponents hinder their efforts by making arguments that are dry and technical. The moral case for free markets is not being made as frequently and eloquently as it can be and Arthur Brooks does a great job addressing this. His book makes the argument that should be a model for everyone who believes in free markets. It is optimistic and persuasive and is based on the data and not some ideological vision. Brooks’ thesis is that free markets are more popular and that it is the more positive way to live. I took away three things from this book worth remembering: a majority of Americans favor free markets; free enterprise is about the pursuit of happiness; and free enterprise is morally right.

            We’re all capitalists now! Brooks makes a great start by pointing out that free enterprise is the preferred option for the majority of Americans. He demonstrates that whether its taxes, markets, the role of gov’t, etc. studies consistently show that 70% of Americans favor free markets. Alexis de Tocqueville noticed that enterprise is part of our national DNA almost two hundred years ago when he wrote Democracy in America. He noticed two exceptional qualities in Americans: their dogged pursuit of their own interests; and their tendency to organize themselves for community service. The 30% are opposed to free enterprise and prefer gov’t solutions. They are made up of leaders and followers. The leaders are the intellectuals, academics, and entertainers, the intellectual upper class. They are the five percent, which means that a majority of them are not in the demonized one percent OWS protestors do not like very much. They find support among Blacks and Hispanics who are more likely to trust the gov’t to solve problems. Among young people between 18 and 34 a majority have a positive view of socialism. This match-up makes for an intense battle of ideas, especially as there are now more outlets to transmit a variety of viewpoints.

            Brooks sets himself apart in his chapter on free enterprise and the pursuit of happiness because he uses aspirational themes that are necessary for making the moral case. He points out that the battle for free markets is about our ability to pursue happiness. Brooks’ research on this subject has shown that the key to happiness is earned success. It is the ability to create value honestly by working for it rather than having it handed to you. People who believe they have earned their success, however they define it, are more likely to report being happy than those who have not. In the 1996 General Social Survey 45 percent of adults said they feel “completely successful” or “very successful” in their work. Among this group 39 percent said they were happy and 20 percent of those who said they were “somewhat successful” or less so said they were happy. In another survey in which respondents were asked if they agreed with the statement that they were responsible for their own success those who agreed/strongly agreed spent 25 percent less time feeling sad than those who disagreed/disagreed strongly. The differences in happiness levels cannot be accounted for by differences in income, education, age, sex, race, religion, politics, and family status. If you control for all those factors by looking at two people who share these traits then you will still see that the one who feels successful will be twice as likely to report feeling very happy about his life. Studies also show that all lottery winners report the same level of happiness, or worse, they had before they won the lottery within months. In fact, they were less happy about simple pleasures (spending time with friends) and new pleasures made possible by their new wealth. A University of Michigan study in 2001 showed that going on welfare increases the likelihood of a person feeling inconsolably sad by 16 percent. Other studies show that welfare recipients are unhappier than equally poor people who do not receive welfare benefits.  This foray into the weeds is meant to drive home the point that the key to human flourishing is not money but earned success in life. On the other side of that coin is the equally important fact that inequality does not make people unhappy. In this context free enterprise is important because it enables us to pursue happiness in life by giving us the opportunity to earn our own success. This transitions smoothly into the moral argument for free enterprise that Brooks makes in the last chapter.

            Lincoln said, “I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich…So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else.” The ultimate goal of the 30 percent coalition is to achieve an equality of outcomes because they believe that equality makes for a fair society in which everyone is better off. Fairness is the euphemism they use to justify income redistribution. It is a moral issue for them and Brooks adamantly warns us not to cede the moral ground to the 30 percent. He offers a competing definition of fairness based on a system that rewards honest hard work and excellence. It is a concept we all understand and live by. This system rewards both the rich and poor and it is not a zero-sum game. The equality that matters is equality of opportunity and not results. Just imagine what sports would be like if all the runners always finished at the same time. Everyone has different goals and priorities and beliefs about what is success and it is absurd to think that everyone will be happier if we all had the same level of wealth. By challenging these presumptions of the 30 percent we can start to push back their control of the moral ground and offer a compelling alternative to greater gov’t intervention into our lives.

            I found myself nodding in agreement as I made my way through the book because Brooks connected the dots that I had seen. The point of free enterprise is not to avoid gov’t intervention wherever possible. The goal is human flourishing and that can only be achieved when people are free to pursue happiness. As we saw, happiness is not the result of having greater wealth but of having earned your success by doing honest work. I would add that it is about having the freedom to pursue the virtuous, good life. It is why so many originally came here and it is why people from around the world continue to risk their lives to come to the U.S. That’s what free markets are about and we should always remember that the stakes are high.