March

THEFREE IDEAS ON LIBERTY 92 The Shoemaker of Los Banos John Stull How BillDetzer made the most of a tiny corner of freedom in a Japanese prison camp. 96 What Does Affirmative Action Affirm? Wendy McElroy In search of "victims,""perpetrators," and commonsense. 100 The Gender Gap CynthiaD. Lee and DwightR. Lee Is there a growingsolidarityof womenvoters? 104 The rnusion That's the Welfare State TiborR. Machan Socialdemocracywill not cure the ills of post-SovietEastern Europe. 107 Why Socialism Causes PoUution ThomasJ. DiLorenzo Socialism,not free enterprise, poses the greater threat to the environment. 113 Why Perestroika Failed PeterJ. Boettke Economicreform cannot be effectedby inconsistentand incoherent half measures. 115 Czechoslovakia on the Hudson RobertZimmerman Someremindersof home on the sidewalksof Sazava,Brno, and Prague. 118 Human Rights, Animal Rights, and Friends of the Earth SylvesterPetro An odious and insidiousclashbetween governmentand society.

120 A Species Worth Preserving John Kell Environmentalistswho are willingto bear the costsof their actions. 122 Sports: The Great American Surrogate DonaldG. Smith What governmenthas taken away,the Yankees,Bears, and Lakers have put back. 124 Book Reviews Doug BandowreviewsGalileo'sRevenge:Junk Sciencein the Courtroomby Peter W. Huber.Jim Christielooks at Stephen L. Carter's Reflectionsofan AffirmativeAction Baby, and NicholasElliott examinesAdam Smithand ModernEconomicsby Edwin G. West. CONTENTS MARCH 1992 VOL. 42 NO.3 THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY Published by The Foundation for Economic Education Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533 President of The Board: Bruce M. Evans VicePresident: Robert G. Anderson Senior Editors: Beth A. Hoffman Brian Summers Contributing Editors: Bettina Bien Greaves Edmund A. Opitz Editor Emeritus: 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: Gregg C.

MacDonald, chairman; Lovett C. Peters, vice chairman; 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 Freeman are 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 $20.00 a year is required to cover direct mail ing costs. Copyright © 1992 by The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. Printed in the U.S.A. Permission is granted to reprint any article in this issue except "The Illusion That's the Welfare State" and "Czechoslovakia on the Hudson," provided appropriate credit is given and two copies of the reprinted material are sent to The Foundation. Bound volumes of The Freeman are 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 Freeman considers 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 Cover art: © Dover Books PERSPECTIVE On Innovation Innovation-changing resource use to reflect new knowledge, new opportunities, or new prob lems-can substantially increase the sustainable output from a given resource. But change always brings painful transition, and if those orchestrating the change cannot personally benefit (for example, by growing richer), then they will be less willing to fight through the changes or indeed to take the initial risk. Typically,an entrepreneur has only to convince a few investors that his or her innovation has promise. By contrast, in democratic politics, the change is financed by taxpayers so the majority of all relevant decisionmakers in the political system must be brought along. But those decisionmakers, unlike investors, personally have little to gain by taking a chance on an innovation until it has a proven track record or broad 'backing by voters.

Innovation, by its nature, is risky. In the private sector, the risks are diversified because the entire society is not committed to a single, agreed-upon course of action. Individuals commonly disagree on what the future holds, as well as on what should be done about it. In an economy, as in an ecological system, diversity of approaches is probably a sur vival characteristic. Nothing in theory prevents government from being innovative. But the battle is harder and the rewards are smaller. -RICHARD L. STROUP,writing in the Spring 1991 issue of Populationand Environment Who Is to Blame? Many of us are all too quick to blame politicians in Washington or at our state capital for the prob lems that we face as a nation. This is absolutely wrong. You cannot blame politicians. You might blame them for not acting like statesmen, but 99 percent of the blame rests with each of us. Politi cians are doing precisely what we send, them to Washington and our state capitals to do, namely to use the power of their office to take that which be longs to another American and then to bring it back to us.

-WALTER WILLIAMS, speaking at Saint Vincent College, February 5, 1991 90 Dead Souls Forget what you have heard and read about lazy,thieving Soviet workers. It is the socialist sys tem that is rotten, not the people. The old Soviet socialist system was unproductive because it was a mass of disincentives. Moscow dictated the salary of a Norilsk miner far in the North and of a cotton grower deep in the South. You got what some bureaucrat said you should get rather than a market-clearing wage. This led to bad labor disci pline; the fired drunkard immediately crossed the street and went to another factory for the same small salary. Yet factory managers fought to swell their pay rolls. To squeeze more money out of the bureau cracy, each company tried to fake the number of working hands it needed. Unneeded workers were known as "dead souls"-after Nikolay Gogol. There were some 12 million of them in the Soviet Union.

-VLADIMIRKVINT, writing in the May 27, 1991,issue of Forbes CultureBeginsat Home Conservatives hardly are agreed on the proper role for government in culture; in my opinion the burden of proof of the benefits of government in tervention lies with those who advocate such in tervention, not with those who oppose it. But whatever the role of government should be, con servatives should be clear about one thing: people should not be forced into certain kinds of cultural expression, and out of others. What conservatives ask for from culture, they must ask for in the cul ture of their own lives. In the formation of culture, conservatives should not talk about "them," but about "us." In this, as in so many other matters that affect our lives, culture begins at home. We must always remember that it is only through ex ample, not through compulsion, that a freely cho sen culture can be formed.

-SAMUEL LIPMAN,publisher of The New Criterion, speaking at The Heritage Foundation, June 14, 1991 PERSPECTIVE UnderpricedResources Why are there underpriced resources available in the market? Because of ignorance. If every par ticipant knew exactly what the factors of produc tion are worth, there would be no profits or losses. But no one knows for sure what anything is worth, that is, what the rational, market-clearing price of anything ought to be. It is the continual quest for better information about the proper pricing of fac tors of production that is the driving force of the capitalist system. It is not just goods and services that are for sale in the free market; it is also accu rate information about prices. We pay dearly for accurate information. Sometimes we pay dearly for inaccurate information. (If we had better informa tion to begin with, we wouldn't.) -GARY NORTH,writing in the June/July 1991 issue of BiblicalEconomicsToday The MoralBasisof Society Within the business community,ifyou don't have a moral basis for entering into economic transac tions it's going to be very difficultto carry them on.

You need trust; you need a sense of the dignity of the 'individual.... One of the issuesthat the Soviet Union and East ern Europe are facing is how they rebuild their moral and ethical basis for actions so that they can have market economies. Simply going to those economies and saying"All you need is freedom, pri vate property rights and prices" is not enough. You have to have a moral basis for a society to function. -E J. HILL,from an interview in the NovemberlDecember 1991 issue of Religion& Liberty Reader'sDigest Reader'sDigestrecently reprinted two Freeman contributions by Donald G. Smith. Don's Septem ber 1991 Freemanarticle, "How to Be an Individu al," 1~~as reprinted in the January 1992 Reader's Dige~t as "If You Want to Make a Difference." And his July 1991 FreemanPerspective, "Anyone Can Do It," was carried as a "Point to Ponder" in November 1991.We have Digestreprints of "If You Want to Make a Difference." Let us know if you would like one or more copies.

91 92 THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY The Shoemaker of Los Banos by John Stull E ach year, the Lions Club in our small southwestern Missouri town of Hartville (population 593) puts on a large fireworks display on the Fourth of July. The organization collects money from the community and, with a generous contribution of its own, has a show to which people come from far and wide. The club shoots off its display from crude mortars on a bluff directly below our house. This is almost the exact position of one of the cannon with which young Confederate General John Sappington Mar maduke shelled the town on a cold January day in 1863.Thus, the rockets' red glare has some historic meaning in this community, and, this past year, there was the added fillip of President George Bush's morning parade and speech in the nearby town of Marshfield. Our front porch provides a ringside seat for the festivities, and we always have a barbecue prior to the show. Our guests sit in chairs or on the old stone steps. This year, I happened to be in the step group, and in the light of one of the star showers, I chanced to glance back. No child was showing greater delight than my friend Bill Detzer, age 93.