May

THEFREE IDEAS ON LIBERTY 164 Transformingthe CommandEconomies Hans R Sennholz Fivestepsfor reformingCommunisteconomies. 167 Germany:The Promiseof Freedom DonaldJ. Boudreauxand ThomasK. Plofchan,Jr. Does areunifiedGermanythreaten worldpeace? 171 Unsafeat Any Speed:The Caseof RepetitiveMotionInjuries John Hood How regulationharmsworkplacesafety. 173 Homosexuality'sLegalRevolution CarlR Horowitz Legalprivileges canlead to dire consequences. 182 ShouldGovernmentSubsidizeHigherEducation? James L. Payne It's time to addresssomebasicquestions. 184 The Centre SquareWaterWorks:A Monumentto GovemmentInefficiency JamesA. Maccaro Our firstpublicworksfiasco. 186 The OnlyFailureWe Haveto Fear Is the Fear of Failure DwightR. Leeand RichardB. McKenzie General economicfailurestemsfrom the fear of smallfailures. 189 The LockerRoomIs PrivateProperty DonaldG. Smith A businessownerhas the rightto admit anyonehe chooses.

190 AffirmativeDisintegration:India'sMostDangerousDecade ShyamJ. Kamath "Affirmativeaction"sets offcasteriots. 193 "Acting Black"CrushesPersonalSpirit Jason D. Hill Breakingthe chainsof racialstereotyping. 195 The RightNot to Live WilliamB. Irvine The rightto die is an inherent part of the rightto life. 196 BookReviews John ChamberlainreviewsThe ConservativeConstitutionby RussellKirk; StevenYatesreviewsUnfinishedBusiness:A CivilRightsStrategyfor America's ThirdCenturyby ClintBolick;WilliamH. PetersonreviewsThe Greatest-Ever Bank Robbery:The Collapseofthe Savingsand Loan Industryby MartinMayer. CONTENTS MAY 1991 VOL. 41 NO.5 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 Freemanis 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 $15.00a 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 "Transforming the Command Economies" and'" Acting Black' Crushes Personal Spirit," provided appropri ate credit is given and two copies of the reprinted material are sent to The Founda tion. 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 AgriculturalPolicy Agriculturalpolicyin the United States is in a mess,to put it mildly.It is costly;it is controversial; it is counterproductive. Federal income transfer payments to farmers have been at near record levels,but news stories persistof farm failures,pressureson agribusiness firms, and the need for new rural development initiatives. Commodity group is set against commodity group as grain producers seek higher prices and livestockproducersgrapplewithartificiallystimu lated feed prices. Our grain and cotton producers are geared to producefor the exportmarket,but theyare tiedto governmentalpriceand productionprogramsde signed primarilyfor the domesticmarket. Their firstmarket,too often,is essentiallya government bin or a governmentwarehouse.

In severalstateslastyear,farmersgotmorethan halfof their net cashfarm in.comein the form of a governmentcheck.... It is instructiveto note that only about 40 per centof U.S. farm commoditiesare under effective price support. Non-pricesupported commodities includecattle,hogs, poultry,fruitsand vegetables and, untilrecently,soybeans.Thesecommodities, in the main,havebeen profitable.Theydon't cost the Treasurylarge sums of money. Producersare free to expand or contract as they choose.They neednotseek"permission"fromthe countyASCS office to plan the scope of their operation. They haveexpandedtheir markets. The troubled areas are precisely those com moditiesthat have had the largestdegree of gov ernmental price intervention.These includefeed grains,food grains,cotton,peanuts,sugar,and to bacco. These are the commoditiesthat have suf fered market loss and have borne oppressivepro ductionand marketingcontrols.

Basic Observation:The higher the degree of governmentalinvolvementin pricingand market ing,the deeperthe economicpitin whichthe com moditywallows. -EARL L. BUTZ, Dean Emeritus of Agriculture, Purdue University.This is from a summaryof his remarks delivered on July 28, 1990, in Abilene, Kansas.

Meetingofthe Minds Drink tea, and you give a friendly pat on the back to the people of India or Sri Lanka. Eat a ba nana and you stroke the people of Ecuador or Cos ta Rica. Bite on a bar of chocolate and you help add dignity to the people of Ghana or the Ivory Coast. Fly Lufthansa, Alitalia, or Japan Air and you advance our relations with our former adver saries' the once-Axis Powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Motor down the highway and you just may be something of a goodwill ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, or Indonesia. Even local frictions and antagonisms tend to be smoothed over and calmed down through market place voting. Catholics and Protestants trade with each other-i.e., vote for each other!-in Belfast, as do Malays and Chinese in Kuala Lumpur, Hin dus and Moslems in Bombay, Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, blacks and whites in Johannesburg. For to a very great extent, the marketplace is color blind and bias-free in a one-on-one global meeting of the minds.

-WILLIAM H. PETERSON, speaking at Gettysburg College, September 27, 1990 The ChessMen Adam Smith, in The Theory of Moral Senti ments,compares central planners to chess players: "The man of system ... is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of govern ment, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it com pletely and in all its parts, without any regard ei ther to the great interests, or to the strong preju dices,which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand ar ranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, al together different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. If those two prinPERSPECTIVE ciples coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society willgo on easily and harmo niously, and is very likely to be happy and success ful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all-times in the highest degree of disorder."

As we examine U.S. policy in the Middle East, Smith's words return to mind. Do not, in fact, State Department strategists view the Middle East as a giant chess-board, as they decide whom to subsi dize, whom to arm, whom to attack, and whom to try to tum against whom? Central planning has failed around the world. Trying to play chess with nations hasn't worked very well either. -BRIAN SUMMERS SovietFreedomof the Press The current situation is that the state possesses a monopoly on printing presses, paper, and distribu tion facilities; and the success of a publication de pends less on the marketplace than on its relation ship with the state. Such freedom of the press is no more than a Soviet propaganda bluff unless the owners of new media enterprises gain en trepreneurial freedom. There is little point in hav ing the right to reach a masspublic without also hav ing the right to organize the effort so that it can endure. A free press will not long remain free if its editions appear only on state paper and are printed only on state printing presses at the pleasure of state agencies.

-ALEXANDER PODRABINEK, writing in the June 26, 1990, issue of the Express-Chronicle,a pro-demo cratic newspaper published in Moscow.Translation by the Center for Democracy in the U.S.S.R., 358 West 30th Street, New York, NY 10001. Reader'sDigestReprints .ChinaArticle "Kun Shou You Dou: Even a Cornered Beast Will Fight," by Marcella Smith, has been reprinted in the March 1991 issue of Reader'sDigest.This ar ticle originally appeared in the December 1990 is sue of The Freeman. Freemanreaders may obtain copies of the Digest version of the article by writing to FEE.