Book Reviews

BOOKS What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation by Charles Murray Broadway Books. 1997 • 192 pages. $20.00 Reviewed by Doug Bandow C harles Murray has long been one of America's most important social scien tists. His book Losing Ground touched off a debate over welfare policy by challenging widely held misconceptions of government programs. With In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government, Murray challenged read ers to think about the purpose of government. Now he has written his most radical work yet-What It Means to Be a Libertarian. In it, he offers an unapologetic case for liberty. As he explains,"freedom, classically understood, is the stuff by which we live satisfying lives. It is as indispensable to happiness as oxygen is to life. Much of it has been taken from us. We must reclaim it." Murray's elegantly written book is dedi cated to helping us do just that. His premise is simple: "Force is bad, and cooperation is good." The reason force is bad, he explains, is that we own ourselves. The reason coop eration is good is that "a voluntary and informed exchange benefits both parties."

Thus, government should intervene only sparingly. First, to protect people from harm committed by others. Most obviously, this is done through criminal and tort law. Second, to enforce contracts. As Murray explains: "The right of contract and the edifice of law that goes with it is what enables us to do business with people we do not know or have no reason to trust." Third, government should provide "public goods." He acknowledges that not everyone agrees there are such things and that there is a slippery slope-after all, what government depredation is not proclaimed to be in the public interest? But he devotes a chapter to 385 explaining the "more thoughtful, legal and philosophical tradition" that lies behind the concept. Perhaps the most important charac teristic of genuine public goods is nonexclu sivity-they cannot be provided to some but not others (e.g., military spending). More over, consumption by some does not reduce the supply (say, of clean air) available to others. These tests are relatively uncontro versial.

More problematic is his notion of public goods as functions that yield benefits to the public. Here, he acknowledges, is the slippery slope at its steepest. To set limits, Murray asks three critical questions. Can the good or service be provided by individuals them selves? (Not, notably, will it be provided as quickly or exactly how we prefer.) Next, are we forcing fellow citizens to pay for services that they don't want? And finally, are we expecting them to pay for something that benefits us much more than them? Even if one wants the government to act, he adds, it should do so at the level closest to the problem. This does not guarantee the protec tion of freedom, but it preserves a greater opportunity to achieve freedom. As he puts it, "Keeping the definitions as local as possible acts as a brake. When the mistakes become too egregious, people can leave town." The result might be a government larger than that preferred by some Freeman readers, but it would still be dramatically smaller than that which exists today. As Murray points out: "If everyone applied the classic criteria for defining a public good plus the three ques tions I just listed to the current inventory of government activities, a huge proportion of them would be so disgracefully out of bounds that they would have no chance of qualifying as public goods."

Still, the core of What It Means to Be a Libertarian is its discussion of liberty, not government. Freedom has obvious practical advantages, of course, but Murray sees the benefits of liberty running far deeper. People, he argues, "require freedom and personal responsibility to live satisfying lives." That is, the good life requires the liberty to associate with others, choose one's work, own property, and make personal decisions. This is not, he 386 THE FREEMAN • JUNE 1997 emphasizes, a call to licentiousness or irre sponsibility. To the contrary, "freedom and responsibility are as inseparable as opposite sides of the same coin." Murray does not ignore or sugarcoat the tough side of liberty. Actions have conse quences, and free people must bear the con sequences of their actions. But Murray's ster ling insight is that this accountability is a positive value. As he puts it: "Responsibility is not the 'price' of freedom but its reward.

Responsibility is what keeps our lives from being trivial." This is a critical point. Freedom is not something that can be appreciated and en joyed only by a person of good character. Rather, freedom is necessary to become a person of good character. It is the opportunity to live up toone's potential. This doesn't mean great achievements in the eyes of oth ers. Emphasizes Murray: "Millions of people find satisfaction every day in doing something well by their own standards." Thus, the benefits of freedom "are embed ded in the very meaning of being human." Men and women must have choice, for choice gives them the opportunity to live full lives. For this reason, liberty is a moral imperative. As Murray puts it, "limited government leaves people with the freedom and responsibility they need to mold satisfying lives both as individuals and as members of families and communities." Murray goes on to sketch his vision of a limited government. At the federal level, he would maintain the Departments of Defense, Justice, and State, as well as the Environmen tal Protection Agency. He would drop all regulation of employment, products, and ser vices; he would kill agricultural, art, business, energy, housing, and technology subsidies. He would end the great transfer programs: Med icaid, Medicare, Social Security, and welfare.

Nor does Murray shrink from the tough issues: drugs, pornography, and the like. As he explains, "The question of whether people should be allowed to harm themselves is [simple]. They must. To think it is right to use force to override another person's prefer ences 'for his own good' is the essence of the totalitarian personality." At the same time, families and communities must be free to protect themselves, but through voluntary, not coercive, means. Murray's is a radical vision to be sure, but he senses political stirrings in a libertarian direction. Whether he's right or not will become evident in the years ahead. What It Means to Be a Libertarian is a gem, a wonderfully written, thoughtful, and acces sible argument for freedom. Indeed, at a time when many books catalog the failure of gov ernment and the efficacyof markets, Murray emphasizes the central moral role of liberty in the human experience: "only freedom enables human beings to live fully human lives." 0 Mr. Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is a monthly columnist for The Freeman.

1997 Index of Economic Freedom by Kim R. Holmes, Bryan T. Johnson, and Melanie Kirkpatrick The Heritage Foundation and Dow Jones & Company. 1997 • 486 pages. $24.95 Reviewed by George C. Leef T his is one of the most useful reference works that an advocate of economic free dom can own. What the authors have done, continuing and expanding on a project begun in 1994, is to provide a detailed look at the economies of 150countries of the world. Only a small number, mainly in Africa and south western Asia (recently independent nations formerly part of the Soviet Union), are not analyzed. The authors have compiled data allowing them to assess each nation's degree of eco nomic freedom in ten categories: trade policy, taxation, government intervention, monetary policy, capital flows and foreign investment, banking policy,wage and price controls, prop erty rights, regulation, and black markets.

Based on their analysis, they then categorize each nation as being free, mostly free, mostly unfree, or repressed: Color maps enable the reader to see at a glance where freedom is to be found and where it is not. Alas, you don't see much blue (representing "free" nations) on the maps. Only eight nations merit that designation. More than half (78) are classified as mostly unfree or repressed. That most of the world has little or no freedom is unsettling if not startling news. Also disturbing is a trend identified by the authors: "Wealthy and economically free countries tend to reintroduce restrictions on economic freedom over time. As they become wealthy, countries begin adding welfare and other social programs that were not afford able when they were poorer. Thus, after they have become economically 'liberated,' coun tries like Germany and France tend to fall back down the scale of economic freedom, getting worse scores than newlyemerging free economies like Hong Kong or Singapore"

(p. xiv). We know that this has been happening in the United States for many decades. (The United States now ranks fifth-tied with Switzerland-in the overall ranking. The pre New Deal United States would certainly have been number one.) The authors are correct in saying, "the seeds of destruction can exist in the fruits of success." Prosperity has usually brought along with it politicization of society that throws economic progress into reverse. Believers in freedom everywhere need to pay attention to this phenomenon and think ahead to the problem of preserving economic freedom once it is attained. The major, inescapable conclusion of the Index is that there is a direct relationship between prosperity and the degree of eco nomic freedom. The authors present the "Curve of Economic Freedom," plotting na tions on a graph, where the vertical axis is the degree of freedom and the horizontal axis is the per capita Gross Domestic Product. The resulting curve slopes upward to the. right that is, high income correlates with freedom, low income correlates with repression. You find no nations that are free, yet poor, and you findno nations that are repressed, yet wealthy.

If anyone can think of a way to get this information into classrooms across America, please speak up. The country-by-country analyses are very interesting. For example, which of the nations BOOKS 387 that were formerly part of the Soviet Union's "prison house of nations" have done the best at throwing off the yoke of statism and estab lishing the conditions necessary for economic growth? The Czech Republic has done the best (tied for 11th freest; the SlovakRepublic, its former partner in nationhood, is much less free, at 75th), followedby Estonia, which at 25 is freer than France, at 31. Russia has done poorly in making the transition from commu nism (ranking 115th), but some of its old allies have done even worse. Ukraine, for example, ranks 123rd, Belarus 129th, and Azerbaijan a repressive 142nd. I hope The Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal will keep this project up to date. It will be useful to be able to look at changes over time. It might, I believe, help to demonstrate the Hayekian point that once governments start interfering with freedom, they are apt to continue to do so.

Someone should undertake a similar study of the United States. It would be nice to have an Index ofFreedom in the United States on the shelf next to this excellent volume. D Mr. Leef is the book review editor of The Freeman. The Welfare State: No Mercy for the Middle Class by John McKay Liberty Books. 1995 • 298 pages. $22.00 Reviewed by Murray Sabrin I f policymakers want to learn about the debilitating effects of the welfare state, John McKay's readable and passionate de fense of limited government is a good place to begin. McKay's book is sprinkled with the kind of rhetoric that is bound to drive "lib erals" (I prefer "statists") up a wall. For example, on page three he states: "An enti tlement beneficiary is a person or special interest group who didn't earn your money, but demands the right to take your money because they want it" (original emphasis). On page 14, McKay puts a stake in the heart of so-called compassionate proponents of the 388 THE FREEMAN • JUNE 1997 welfare state: "It's easy to be noble with other people's money" (original emphasis).

In The Welfare State, McKay tackles such issues as discrimination, regulation, health care, taxation, and entitlements. He shows how the free market has been hampered by government intervention, and makes the moral case for free enterprise an integral part of his argument. McKay sums up his case against the welfare state with the follow ing: "Entitlement programs violate our prop erty rights. They confiscate what we earn and give our money to total strangers without our consent. Government assumes it has the right to steal, because it does so by majority rule. It does not have that right. As individual citi zens, we don't have the right to steal from our neighbors. We therefore can't delegate such a right to a governmentwho is simplyour agent." To end the welfare state McKay proposes a constitutional amendment that would pro tect individual rights and restrict government depredations on the American people. In addition, he virtuallycallsfor a tax-free Amer ica by advocating fees to be paid by citizens to maintain the courts, police, and armed forces.

Overall, The Welfare State is a welcome addition to the growingliterature of freedom. However, some repetition of phrases and statements should have been edited for re dundancy. In addition, the factual material is abundant, but one error stands out; the pop ulation of Canada is cited on page 123 as around 15 million. According to the latest data, our neighbor to the north has a popu lation of approximately 25 million. Also, McKay blames the welfare state for higher prices. Yes, if we assume the monetary au thorities crank up the printing presses. A brief overviewof the welfare state's necessary ally, the central bank-our Federal Reserve would have been welcome. The welfare state is in retreat around the world-ideologically, financially, and cultur ally. Unfortunately, U.S. proponents of the entitlement philosophy will be fighting tooth and nail to postpone the inevitable. If the Berlin Wall can come down, if the Soviet Empire can disappear, then America's wel fare state is living on borrowed time.

Leonard Read, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, Murray Rothbard, and the other giants of liberty are not alive to see the vindication of their lifetime work. But today's cohort of conservatives and libertarians are gallantly carrying the torch of liberty into the 21st century. A free and prosperous America is on the horizon. John McKay's The Welfare State will help us reach that destination. 0 Dr. Sabrin isprofessoroffinance, Ramapo Collegeof New Jersey, and author of Tax Free 2000: The Rebirth of American Liberty. The Political Racket: Deceit, Self-Interest and Corruption in American Politics by Martin L. Gross Ballantine Books. 1996 • 263 pages. $12.50 paperback Reviewed by William H. Peterson M artin Gross, whose title here tells it all, sifts through a lot of political dirt. He names names-including ethicallychallenged politicians and special-interest PAC contrib utors. Mr. Gross also devotes many pages to the problem of pork-Congressional vote trading on federal spending projects for favored spots and favored Congresspeople, including: • $3 million for an Orlando, Florida, street car project • $5 million for a third golf course at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C.

• $96 million for a courthouse in Portland, Oregon • $120 million for a courthouse in Phoenix, Arizona Impressive stuffall right, but if anything the Gross work is too parochial, too present minded. Yes, smellydeals are cut all the time in that den of iniquity, Washington, D.C. But couldn't that charge also be levied against Ottawa, Rome, Moscow, Nairobi, Brasilia, and virtually all other capitals? Or, for that matter, against Ancient Athens and Ancient Rome?

Hear Socrates, for example, c. 399 B.C.: "If I had engaged in politics, 0 men of Athens, I should have perished long ago, and done no good either to you or to myself." Or hear Quintus Cicero, author of Handbook on Pol itics (c. 50 B.C.), which he prepared as an electioneering aid for his brother, Roman senator Marcus Cicero: "One has great need of a flattering manner which, wrong and discreditable though it may be in other walks of life, is indispensable in seeking office. Human nature being what it is, all men prefer a false promise to a flat refusal." I also wonder about the author's multifac eted solution, what he calls a "Middle-Class Manifesto," to America's political mess. Some of his ideas merit consideration-for instance, term limits, a balanced budget amendment, elimination of $86 billion in annual corporate welfare through 127federal subsidies to business, cutting back one-third of the federal civilian labor force to save $50 billion a year, and revamping Social Security along the privatizing lines of Chile with indi vidual retirement accounts.

But Mr. Gross gums up a generally sensible book by complaining about high CEO salaries of "$4, $5, even $10 or $15 million a year." CEO compensation is not a political problem. It is not a problem at all and bringing it up just encourages the redistributionists who constantly play on envy. He also objects to imports from "low-wage" countries such as Mexico and China, and thinks the United States should restrict Japanese imports "at exactlythe same level they do ours." The ideas of .consumer sovereignty and unilateral free trade seem foreign to him. Still, this informative and provocative work can instruct the wary reader who is so often the fellow pushed out of the loop, who is forced to pick up the tab for the Interven tionist State, busily dispensing concentrated benefits over diffused costs. Yale economist William Graham Sumner in 1883 called this fellow the Forgotten Man. I call him Every M~ 0 Dr. Peterson is Heritage Foundation adjunct scholar and Distinguished Lundy Professor Emeritus of business philosophy at Campbell University in North Carolina.

BOOKS 389 The Road to Hell by Michael Maren The Free Press. 1997 • 302 pages. $25.00 Reviewed by Laurence M. Vance T he old cliche says: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." That is, the best of intentions often result in the worst of consequences. Yet, although everyone would certainly agree that feeding starving children is one of the best intentions that anyone could have, few would ever imagine that such noble humanitarianism could have disastrous con sequences. The Road to Hell, by Michael Maren, is a brutal indictment of the whole business of humanitarian intervention and the industry of aid. And for most of the participants it is just that: a business. Just as war is big business for defense contractors, the purveyors of food to starving children likewise gorge themselves at the public trough. Maren is well qualified to make such an indictment, having spent much of the last 20 years in Africa both as an aid worker and a journalist. And just as Maren has written for Harper's, The Village Voice, and The New Republic-not exactly known for their advo cacy of free markets and limited govern ment-so The Road to Hell is not a polemic against the welfare state and foreign aid. But therein lies the strength of the book. It is a brutally honest personal account of what the book's subtitle calls "the ravaging effects of foreign aid and international charity."