Richard Ebeling emails:
I have a new piece up today on Northwood University's blog, "In Defense of Capitalism" on "Real Economic Reform for a Hurting Haiti":
The terrible earthquake disaster in Haiti is resulting in the start of a huge government and private relief effort.
But there are already voices like former president Bill Clinton's who are calling for a longer-term recovery plan for the Haitian economy through government-business-private "partnerships." Unfortunately for the people of Haiti this is likely to generate more of the same that has kept them in poverty, rather than the more market-oriented path that other poor countries have been following, and which has been lifting them out of poverty.
The people of Haiti do not need a continuation of government regulation, control, and coerced redistribution. They need what Adam Smith called a "system of natural liberty" in his book, The Wealth of Nations. They need individual liberty, private property rights, impartial rule of law, open, competitive markets, limited government, low taxes, free trade, a non-inflationary monetary system, and a political and economic environment friendly to entrepreneurship and capital formation.
That is the road to real economic recovery to left Haiti out of poverty in the aftermath of this terrible human tragedy.
Read the full article here.
Wenzel,
ReplyDeleteThe liberty minds are all thinking alike on this one. I typed up "A Brief History of Haiti" last night that takes a similar tact: http://n-k-1.blogspot.com/2010/01/brief-history-of-haiti.html
Reading the quotations from Adam Smith's System of Natural Liberty makes one wish it was required reading in Congress and the White House - that is, if you could get them to put down their dog eared copies of Rules for Radicals.
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