June

THEFREE IDEAS ON LIBERTY 204 What Garbage Crisis? CharlesW' Baird A market approach to solidwastemanagement. 208 The Samaritan'sDilemmaand the WelfareState E. C. Pasour,Jr. A Good Samaritancan help or harm. 212 The Shameof the Church Norman S. Ream Four chargesagainstcapitalism. 215 Vive la DifTerence RidgwayK. Foley, Jr. The visionof the New World. 217 The Do-It-YourselfQueen VincentCurcio A portrait of LucilleLortel, "The Queen of Off-Broadway." 224 Price ControlsDo Not Control Prices BillAnderson Controlledpricesoften rise,rather than fall. 227 Why the WelfareState Is Immoral TiborR. Machan Transferpaymentsare legalizedtheft. 229 The Fightfor Beijing StevenW' Mosher An eyewitnessaccountof Communistterror. 234 A CloserLook at "Dumping" S. J. Cicero Economicprinciplesare the same acrossthe street-or acrossan ocean. 236 Book Reviews David OsterfeldreviewsLords of Povertyby Graham Hancock;WilliamH.

Peterson reviewsThe MarketEconomy:A Readeredited by James L. Doti and DwightR. Lee; Carl Helstrom reviewsCapitalismby Arthur Seldon;Aaron WildavskyreviewsThe PoliticalEconomy of SovietSocialismby Peter J. Boettke. CONTENTS JUNE 1991 VOL. 41 NO.6 THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY Published by The Foundation for Economic Education Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533 President of The Board: Bruce M. Evans Vice-President: Robert G. Anderson Senior Editors: Beth A. Hoffman Brian Summers Contributing Editors: Bettina Bien Greaves Edmund A. Opitz Paul L. Poirot Copy Editor: Deane M. Brasfield The Freeman is the monthly publication of The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533. FEE, established in 1946 by Leonard E. Read, is a nonpolitical educational champion of private property, the free market, and limited govern ment. FEE is classified as a 26 USC 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt organization. Other officers of FEE's Board of Trustees are: Thomas C.

Stevens, chairman; Philip M. Spicer, vice chairman; Paul L. Poirot, secretary; Don L. Foote, treasurer. The costs of Foundation projects and services are met through donations. Donations are in vited in any amount. Subscriptions to The Freemanare available to any interested per son in the United States for the asking. Addi tional single copies $1.00; 10 or more, 50 cents each. For foreign delivery, a donation of $15.00 a year is required to cover direct mail ing costs. Copyright © 1991 by The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. Printed in the U.S.A. Permission is granted to reprint any article in this issue except "Why the Welfare State Is Immoral," provided appropriate credit is given and two copies of the reprinted material are sent to The Foundation. Bound volumes of The Freemanare available from The Foundation for calendar years 1971 to date. Earlier volumes as well as current is sues are available on microfilm from Univer sity Microfilms, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106.

The Freemanconsiders unsolicited editorial submissions, but they must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Our author's guide is available on request. Phone: (914) 591-7230 FAX: (914) 591-8910 PERSPECTIVE Why WelfareFails First, government has no money of its own. What money it spends must be taken from the peo ple, or borrowed in the people's name. Therefore, when it takes money from some people and gives it to other people, it is engaging in legal plunder. Second, the forced transfers are two-edged: those from whom the money is taken are ag grieved, while the recipients are demoralized they have given up some responsibility in ex change for some dependence. Third, to the extent that they are dependent, the recipients are less inclined to work harder to im prove their condition or to save for retirement. Fourth, once the transfers have begun, they build their own momentum. The bureaucracy that administers them has a self-interest in ex panding both its clientele and the range of trans fers it offers.

Fifth, by definition the transfers are taken from the productive sector. More and more of the wealth it creates, instead of being reinvested for the benefit of the whole society, is diverted into consumption. -KENNETH McDONALD Toronto, Canada Too ManyPeople? The fact that a country is poor ... does not mean it is overpopulated .... China has the same popu lation density as Pennsylvania. Countries like Taiwan, with five times China's population densi ty, and South Korea, with four times the density, out-produce her four and five times respectively. Is the problem too many consumers or too many commissars? -FRANK RUDDY, writing in the May 1990issue of Crisis Red Tapein Bangladesh It is in the Second Nine-Story Building at the Government's central Secretariat that much of life in this nation of 100 million people slows to a standstill. Here, in their offices along dark, winding corri dors, some of the Government's 1.2 million bu202 reaucrats sit almost motionless amid towering stacks of dusty files tied neatly, by 19th century British tradition, in red tape.

"We move a file from here to there, but no work is done," said a senior Government official. ... "The more senior the officer, the higher the stack of files on his table, said A. R. H. Doha, a for mer Foreign Minister who said one of his main ac complishments in office had been to throw heaps of 40-year-old files out of the window.... Each day, outside the guarded gates of the Sec retariat buildings, scores of petitioners gather to pursue the fate of their applications, some of which, tied with a delicate bow in red-or white-tape, have been waiting action for years. -The New York Times TwentyMiles While driving to Delaware recently, I crossed the George Washington Bridge from New York City to New Jersey. As I went over the bridge, I glanced at the odometer; it is 20 miles from FEE to the bridge. You see a lot in those 20 miles. There are palatial homes, middle class neighborhoods, and the slums of the very poor. How, I wondered when I returned to my desk the next day,can we reach so many dif ferent people?

On one level, of course, we do reach people from all walks of life. Freeman articles appear in newspapers across the United States, from the StreetNews hawked by New York City's homeless to The Wall StreetJournal.Our Spanish-language translations appear throughout Latin America. Reader'sDigestreprints Freemanarticles in several languages around the world. Freeman authors even appear on talk shows. But on another level, the written and spoken word can only go so far. Our message can help peo ple to understand the freedom philosophy; it can inspire them to want to learn more. But in the final analysis, real change must come from within our own homes, our own families, from within our selves as individuals. We must serve as exemplars, and live the philosophy we espouse. Then we will reach the most important people in our lives, and, PERSPECTIVE with patience and consistency, our message will spread to the ends of the earth.

-BRIAN SUMMERS Environmentalismand Capitalism Our planet's environmental problems will only worsen if the artificially created gap between envi ronmentalism and capitalism is allowed to widen. Although far from perfect, a free market is the most efficient way of distributing commodities to consumers. This basic principle holds true whether that commodity is bread or clean air. It is no coin cidence that there is a dire shortage of both bread and clean air in the Soviet Union. Instead of sup pressing capitalist forces, environmentalists should harness these forces to the planet's benefit. -GRANT THOMPSON, writing in the December 1990 CarolinaCritic A Big Mistake Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria's deposed Communist dictator, long regarded as the East bloc leader most subservient to Moscow,looked back on his long po litical career during an interview ... and said it was all a big mistake. "If I had to do it over again, I would not even be a Communist, and if Lenin were alive today he would say the same thing," said Mr. Zhivkov as he sat in his granddaughter's luxurious villa on a hill side above Sofia, where he remains under house arrest.

Mr. Zhivkov, 79 years old, ruled Bulgaria for 35 years before being forced to resign just over a year ago. He said he began to doubt the Communist sys tem in the mid-1950s and realized after the rise of Mikhail S. Gorbachev in the Soviet Union that Communism's underpinnings were faulty. "I have been a soldier, I have been a Communist, it is my deep belief and conviction that I served my people and my country," Mr. Zhivkov said. "But I must now admit that we started from the wrong ba sis, from the wrong premise. The foundation of so cialism was wrong." -CHUCK SUDETIC,writing in the November 28, 1990,issue of The New York Times 203 204 THEFREEMAN IDEAS ON LIBERTY What Garbage Crisis? by Charles W. Baird L ast November, several state-wide environ mental initiatives-most notably Califor nia's $12 billion "Big Green" and a $2 bil lion New York bond issue for land acquisition, dump closures, and recycling subsidies-failed to pass. Big Green was defeated by a 2-to-1 margin.