The Little Brown Reader

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If nothing else, my time in Quebec dispelled any lingering doubts about whether the fringe groups have anything new to offer poor countries. Their issues may be new — human rights, environmental protection, and cultural diversity — but their prescription is as stale as ever: trade barriers and redistributive socialism. Never mind that those policies have failed time and again; anti-trade activists can abide anything, it seems, except choice and freedom. Their promise of government-sponsored prosperity is illusory. Countries that have heeded such advice — Cuba, North Korea, and those throughout much of Africa — have made little progress in raising living standards, while those that have embraced free markets — Taiwan, South Korea, Chile, Singapore, and others — have seen real improvements in the lives of average people.

There is no palatable alternative to free economies and free trade. A market economy isn't simply a place where people provide goods and services in the pursuit of profits — not that there's anything wrong with that. Market competition is also a discovery process; it is a way of learning things we wouldn't otherwise know. It is that knowledge that makes us more productive, wealthier, healthier, and better able to protect our world. The ability to reason and innovate is mankind's greatest gift. Yet the only way to realize that potential, to get at the knowledge that improves our lives, is through an open-market system where people are allowed to compete to satisfy the wants and needs of others.