Free Markets – Page 11 – artdiamondblog.com

Philosopher Herbert Spencer Defended Capitalism in America

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

Spencer was sometimes a much better philosopher than the modern caricature portrays, a caricature exemplified by the review quoted below and, perhaps, by the book reviewed. I would like to look at this book sometime, because there may be some interesting history in it—though I am not optimistic about the book’s economic assumptions, or its account of Spencer’s philosophy.

(p. A11) Herbert Spencer, the 19th-century British philosopher, is remembered today as the forbidding — almost forbidden — father of “Social Darwinism,” a school of thought declaring that the fittest prosper in a free marketplace and the human race is gradually improved because only the strong survive. In Barry Werth’s satisfying “Banquet at Delmonico’s,” Spencer is also a querulous 62-year-old celibate whose 1882 American tour culminates in a feast to which are invited the “mostly Republican men of science, religion, business, and government” who shared and spread the Spencerian creed.

Applying Darwinian insights about evolution to political, economic and social life — though he did not himself use the term “Social Darwinism” — Spencer concluded that vigorous competition and unfettered capitalism conduced to the betterment of society. He predicted that the American, raised in liberty, would evolve into “a finer type of man than has hitherto existed,” dazzling the world with “the highest form of government” and “a civilization grander than any the world has known.”
. . .
The public clamor over the visit of a dyspeptic foreign philosopher to these shores was partly due to the indefatigable promotion of Edward Livingston Youmans, Spencer’s chief American proselytizer, who called his beau ideal the most original thinker in the history of mankind. Youmans is among the several critics and apostles of Spencer and Darwin whose profiles Mr. Werth skillfully interweaves in this Gilded Age tapestry.

For the full review, see:
BILL KAUFFMAN. “BOOKSHELF; Darwin in the New World; When the father of Social Darwinism came to America, the place where the fittest were supposed to thrive.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., January 9, 2009): A11.
(Note: ellipsis added; italics in original.)

The book under review is:
Werth, Barry. Banquet at Delmonico’s: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America. New York: Random House, 2009.

For a more balanced account of Spencer, see the first review below for the mostly good in Spencer, and the second review below for the mostly bad in Spencer:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. “Spencer’s Tragedy: Review of Herbert Spencer’s The Principles of Ethics.” Modern Age 24, no. 4 (Fall 1980): 419-421.
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. “The State of Spencer: Review of Herbert Spencer’s The Man Versus the State.” Modern Age 28, nos. 2-3 (Spring/Summer 1984): 286-288.

Dubai Has Strong Ruling Clan, But Weak Institutions

Source of book image: http://www.christopherdavidson.net/sitebuilder/images/DVOS_cover-210×300.jpg

(p. 4) For Mr. Davidson, Dubai’s greatest weakness lies in its autocratic governing system. Politics in the emirate, as in most of the Middle East, pivots not on institutions but on clans — a ruling dynasty and its favorites who own and run Dubai in opaque fashion.

True enough, but most of the Middle East is authoritarian, yet Dubai’s enlightened despotism and welcoming social environment have stood out for fostering economic advance. Like China, albeit on a tiny scale, Dubai is engaged in an experiment of economic liberalization without political democracy.
Mr. Davidson further contends that unstable neighbors threaten Dubai’s success, but here he may have matters reversed. When Egypt and Iran stifle their entrepreneurs, many of them find a wide berth in Dubai. When Saudi Arabia imposes cultural restrictions on its population, Dubai offers a place to drink and let loose. When India and Pakistan have trouble creating jobs for their large populations, Dubai absorbs labor migrants. When Iraq or Lebanon descends into war, Dubai profits from rebuilding them.
In short, until a vast arc of countries from East Africa to Southeast Asia changes substantially, Dubai will remain poised to benefit by providing a relatively open, secure, low-tax, business-friendly alternative.

For the full review, see:
STEPHEN KOTKIN. “OFF THE SHELF; The Glittering Emirate, Revisited.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., December 7, 2008): 4.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date December 6, 2008, and the title “OFF THE SHELF; Dubai, the Glittering Emirate, Revisited.”)

The book under review, is:
Davidson, Christopher M. Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

It’s Hard to Be Consistent

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) Both Adam Smith and Horatio Alger would find something to like in the rise of T. Boone Pickens. “Boy geologist” Boone quit a promising job at Phillips Petroleum in the mid-1950s and built, over the following decades, Mesa Petroleum, a top North American independent oil and gas producer. Mesa found lots of oil and gas, provided jobs for hundreds of workers, and earned wealth for thousands of investors. During the same years, Mr. Pickens’s attempts to take over Cities Service, Gulf Oil, Phillips and Unocal made the whole oil industry shape up: His bids required the managers of each company to look hard at its practices and improve its shareholder returns.

Such accomplishments are the core of Mr. Pickens’s 1987 autobiography, “Boone,” which was updated 13 years later and retitled “The Luckiest Guy in the World.” In those books, Mr. Pickens’s political philosophy rang loud and clear. “I believe,” he stated, “the greatest opportunity lies in a free marketplace.” He warned: “There are powerful forces afoot trying to restrict that freedom in the interests of the vested and already wealthy. I am talking about a relatively small collection of corporate executives who would use the engine of American commerce for their own narrow ends.”
. . .
Now Mr. Pickens has new dreams — and he is lobbying Washington to make them come alive.
In particular, Mr. Pickens wants the federal government — through a mix of tax incentives, mandates and subsidies — to override the market and redirect the uses of natural gas.
. . .
“The First Billion” argues for this plan, along with recounting Mr. Pickens’s business ups and downs. The book is often entertaining, featuring the usual “Boone-isms”: e.g., “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.” But readers unfamiliar with Mr. Pickens’s earlier memoirs may not realize that the new one represents a kind of bait-and-switch. Mr. Pickens’s standing to pronounce on energy matters was earned as a free-market producer. He is now using that standing to defy the market itself.

For the full review, see:
ROBERT BRADLEY JR. “BUSINESS BOOKSHELF; When Effort Is Energetic.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., September 10, 2008): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)

The book under review is:
Pickens, T. Boone. The First Billion Is the Hardest: Reflections on a Life of Comebacks and America’s Energy Future. New York: Crown Business, 2008.

Less Credentialed Hazlitt Got More Right than Keynes and White

Source of book image:
http://s.s-bol.com/imgbase0/imagebase/large/FC/7/0/6/9/9200000009899607.jpg

(p. C5) One of the many merits of “The Battle of Bretton Woods,” a superb history of mid-20th-century monetary affairs, is the timing of its publication. Today, as never before, central banks are printing money, suppressing interest rates and manipulating markets. You wonder where it will all end.
. . .
(p. C6) According to Mr. Steil, the recondite Bretton Woods debates failed to engage the American public as a political issue. If so, it was no fault of Henry Hazlitt’s. An editorial writer for the New York Times, Hazlitt directed persistent, withering fire against White’s and Keynes’s brainchild. (His collected editorials, titled “From Bretton Woods to World Inflation,” were published in 1984.) The conference had it all wrong, Hazlitt thundered in the Times. The IMF would subsidize unsound policies. What was wanted were sound ones.
“The broad principles should not be difficult to formulate,” the readers of the Times were reminded on the eve of the gathering in New Hampshire. Governments should balance their budgets, forswear 1930s-style impediments to free trade (quotas, exchange restrictions) and refrain from “currency and credit inflation.” And the currency itself? It should be “redeemable in something that is itself fixed and definite: for all practical purposes this means a return to the historic gold standard.”
. . .
White was a Harvard Ph.D. Keynes was, at least according to Mr. Steil, “the most innovative and iconoclastic economist of his age, if not of all time.” Hazlitt was no trained economist at all. But it was he, not the two acclaimed experts, who turned out to be right.

For the full review, see:
James Grant. “A Fateful Meeting That Shaped the World.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., March 16, 2013): C5-C6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 15, 2013.)

The book under review is:
Steil, Benn. The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.

Samuel Adams Is Underrated Founder Because He Burned His Paper Trail

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A17) “Samuel Adams: A Life” makes it abundantly clear why the British so detested Adams. He started talking independence more than a decade before the Declaration and did more than anyone to organize opposition to colonial taxes and to make “no taxation without representation” a rallying cry. . . .
. . .
If Mr. Stoll’s biography lacks the narrative power of books on other Founders, such as David McCullough’s “John Adams,” the reason may be that the paper trail left by Samuel Adams is frustratingly short. He destroyed much of his correspondence during the revolutionary years, fearful that it could fall into the wrong hands. Some of the letters that remain end with the words “burn this.” This Adams wasn’t playing for the history books. He was trying to plot a revolution. Mr. Stoll makes a convincing case that Samuel Adams is not just the most underrated of the Founders but also one of the most admirable, down-to-earth and principled (he worked to abolish slavery).

For the full review, see:
JONATHAN KARL. “Revolution Is No Tea Party; Rabble-rouser, wordsmith, strategist and defender of liberty.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., November 3, 2008): A17.
(Note: ellipses added.)

The book under review is:
Stoll, Ira. Samuel Adams: A Life. New York: Free Press, 2008.

‘Buy Local’ Implies ‘Sell Local’

In the spirit of the great Bastiat:

(p. 1117) Buy local (BL) campaigns are gaining ground in many towns, cities, counties, and states throughout the United States. These commendable efforts are based on intuitive principles that: local production reduces energy usage and therefore mitigates against climate change; the rapid approach of peak oil will lead to potentially disastrous dislocations that will erode society’s ability to provide adequate food supplies and medical care; and face-to-face economic relationships between producer and consumer, such as in a farmers’ market setting, provide a superior form of economic organization relative to the impersonal nature of our current industrial modes of production.

It is in this spirit that we, the members of Sustainability in Transportation, Utilities, Production, the Environment, and Development (STUPED), urge our local governments to take the next logical step: requirements for selling local.
. . .
This is also clearly a fairer way to approach the problem of non-local production. There exists the temptation for a given locality to urge its community members to BL, but to also simultaneously promote selling to other localities in the name of “increased local employment.” Of course, this kind of thinking totally ignores the fact that by selling goods to another region, those of us in a local production area cause harm to workers in that distant region who, as a result of our incursion into their local economies, reduce that distant region’s abilities to provide for itself.
Given the foregoing, it is evident that selllocal requirements are virtually required for the sustainability of our local economies. Buy Local publicity campaigns may make us feel better, but a well-enforced set of sell-local regulations eliminates the thorniest problem of a free-market approach–the tendency of consumers to buy whatever they darn well please. STUPED urges our local governments to adopt such a set of regulations.

Source:
Thompson, Philip, and Hart Hodges. “Sell Local! The Next Logical Step.” Economic Inquiry 49, no. 4 (October 2011): 1117-17.
(Note: italics in original; ellipsis added.)

Why Health Care Costs So Much in McAllen

(p. 235) Atul Gawande lays out “The Cost Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health care.” “It is spring in McAllen, Texas. The morning sun is warm. The streets are lined with palm trees and pickup trucks. McAllen is in Hidalgo County, which has the lowest household income in the country, but it’s a border town, and a thriving foreign-trade zone has kept the unemployment rate below ten per cent. McAllen calls itself the Square Dance Capital of the World. ‘Lonesome Dove’ was set around here. McAllen has another distinction, too: it is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. Only Miami–which has much higher labor and living costs–spends more per person on health care. In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average. The income per capita is twelve thousand dollars. In other words, Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns.”

Gawande as quoted in:
Taylor, Timothy. “Recommendations for Further Reading.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 24, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 231-38.

The full Gawande article can be viewed online at:
Gawande, Atul. “Annals of Medicine; the Cost Conundrum; What a Texas Town Can Teach Us About Health Care.” The New Yorker 85, no. 16 (June 2009): 36-44.

A later Gawande article, that asks why the health care system cannot be run as well as The Cheesecake Factory, can be viewed online at the link below. (Spoiler alert: I haven’t read this article yet, but I’m guessing it has something to do with the feedback and incentives provided by the free market.)
Gawande, Atul. “Annals of Health Care; Big Med; Restaurant Chains Have Managed to Combine Quality Control, Cost Control, and Innovation. Can Health Care?” The New Yorker 88, no. 24 (August 2012): 52-63.

When Trade Is a Matter of Life and Death (and the Progress of Knowledge)

Source of book image: http://www.mikedash.com/assets/images/Batavia-l.jpg

(p. 236) In Mike Dash’s book, Batavia’s Graveyard, the mutineers on the ship Batavia get stranded on a parched sand bar with the liquor and foodstuffs, but no fresh water. A few hundred watery yards away are the remnants of the loyal crew, stuck on another islet without liquor or provisions, but with plentiful fresh water. Trade proves impossible. The analog of this breakdown is the current relationship between history and the social sciences.

Source:
Clark, Gregory. “The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfillment in Early Modern England.” Journal of Economic History 71, no. 1 (March 2011): 236-37.
(Note: italics in original.)

Dash’s book that Clark mentions:
Dash, Mike. Batavia’s Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History’s Bloodiest Mutiny. New York: Crown, 2002.

Renaissance Florence: “A Really Vibrant, Flexible, and Free-Market City”

Source of book image: http://covers.booktopia.com.au/big/9781421400594/the-economy-of-renaissance-florence.jpg

(p. 176) Chapters 4 and 5 deal with manufacturing, by far the main source of employment in the city. The Florentine textile industry had developed thanks to the Arno River, which provided water and power, and had become a market leader in Europe for high-quality products. Production was based, as everywhere in Europe, on a putting-out system–but strictly confined to the city. The author describes the organization and its changes over time, stressing, as for international banking, the flexibility of firms and their high turnover. Workers were organized in guilds, but the author stresses their nature as political associations rather than their economic role. Florentine guilds did not restrict the access to profession nor stifle innovation. Chapter 6 describes the banks catering for urban market–including local branches of international banks as well as smaller local firms, plus pawnbrokers, both Catholic and Jews. Local banks appeared thoroughly modern in their business and the resort to banking services was quite widespread. Artisans and workers were routinely paid with checks and had bank accounts. And the whole system worked well with almost no state intervention, at least until the late sixteenth century.
. . .
. . . , the author argues that Florentine society was very upwardly mobile, at least for the standard of the time and that the distribution of wealth by household according to the 1427 Catasto was fairly equal (although inequality increased in the next century).
(p. 177) As a whole, at the end of the book one has the impression of a really vibrant, flexible, and free-market city. The standard of living was undoubtedly high and not only for the wealthy, as witnessed by the art treasures of the city, but also for the working class. Literacy and numeracy was very common, and the majority of children attended a primary school.

For the full review, see:
Federico, Giovanni. “Review of: The Economy of Renaissance Florence.” Journal of Economic Literature 48, no. 1 (2010): 175-77.

Book under review:
Goldthwaite, Richard A. The Economy of Renaissance Florence. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

“Let the Consumers Decide When and Where They Want to Eat”

“Rachel Billow is the co-founder of La Cocinita, a food truck in New Orleans that serves Latin American cuisine. She says the city’s requirement that mobile food vendors change locations after 45 minutes in one spot isn’t feasible. “It takes about a half-hour to set up,” she says.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B8) A street fight is brewing between gourmet food-truck vendors and restaurants–not over the grub, but how it’s sold.

Under pressure to protect bricks-and-mortar restaurants from increased competition, several big cities are starting to apply the brakes on a rising tide of food-truck vendors with fully loaded kitchens.
Boston, Chicago, St. Louis and Seattle are among the cities enacting laws that restrict where food trucks can serve customers in proximity to their rivals and for how long. Some food-truck operators argue that they shouldn’t be punished for offering an innovative service, especially since many cities already allow restaurants to open up alongside one another.
“The rules are unfair,” says Amy Le, owner of Duck N Roll, a food truck in Chicago serving Asian-style cuisine that includes short ribs and mango lychee.
Three weeks after she launched the business last fall, she received a ticket from local law enforcement for doing business about 150 feet from a wine bar–50 feet within the city’s limit for how close food trucks can park outside of retail food establishments.
Ms. Le says she later had to spend nearly a full day in court to find out what the violation would cost her–about $300–and that she lost an estimated $600 to $700 in sales as a result.
“The 200-foot buffer prohibits me from competing,” says Ms. Le, 32 years old, who also opposes a new rule requiring food trucks to install global-positioning devices so the city can track their whereabouts. “It is a free market. Let the consumers decide when and where they want to eat.”
. . .
Gourmet food-truck operators say another problem is that in many cities they are still relegated to antiquated rules intended for ice-cream, hot-dog and other traditional mobile vendors with smaller and less complex menus.
New Orleans, for example, requires mobile food vendors to change locations after 45 minutes in one spot, among other restrictions.
“It’s not a feasible amount of time for this business model,” says 31-year-old Rachel Billow, who last year co-founded La Cocinita, a food truck that serves Latin American cuisine such as plantains and arepas. “It takes about a half-hour to set up.”
Ms. Billow says she and her business partner, Venezuelan chef Benoit Angulo, started La Cocinita after several years of working in the restaurant industry. They invested $50,000 in start-up costs, an amount that included $12,000 in modifications to their vehicle to satisfy the city’s fire code, she adds.

For the full story, see:
SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN. “Street Fight: Food Trucks vs. Restaurants; Some Big Cities Jump Into the Fray, Enacting Parking Restrictions to Cope With Rising Tide of Gourmet Vendors.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., August 9, 2012): B8.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

“Amy Le, owner of Duck N Roll, an Asian-style food truck in Chicago, says last fall she received a fine for doing business about 150 feet from a wine bar–50 feet within the city’s limit for how close food trucks can park outside of retail food establishments.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

People “Enmeshed in Modern Commerce” Are More Generous

(p. C4) A few years ago, Joe Henrich of the University of British Columbia and his colleagues did a series of experiments in small-scale societies in the Amazon, New Guinea and Africa. They asked people to play the “ultimatum game,” in which a player must decide how much of a windfall he needs to share with another player to prevent the other player from exercising his right to veto the whole deal. The more the small-scale society is enmeshed in modern commerce, the more generous the offers people make. This may shock those who believe in Rousseau’s idea of the “noble savage,” but not those who believe in the virtues of what Montesquieu called “sweet commerce.”
. . .
. . . , though human beings do kind things unrewarded for their neighbors, for reward they also do kind things for strangers: They hand more cash to merchants than they do to beggars.

For the full commentary, see:
MATT RIDLEY. “MIND & MATTER; Which Makes Us Nicer, Team Spirit or Trade?” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., August 27, 2011): C4.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Page 76 of the Henrich et al article has the key result that Ridley summarizes:
Henrich, Joseph, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin F. Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis, and Richard McElreath. “In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies.” American Economic Review 91, no. 2 (May 2001): 73-78.