Tuesday, September 06, 2005

How leftists kill babies (and I'm not talking about abortion)

...rather, I'm talking about market interference. In a globalized economy, economic inefficiency in any part of the world reduces global wealth. In a world with so many human beings living right at the threshold of starvation, such reductions are bound to knock some humans out of the survival column. And study after study has shown that market interference causes economic inefficiency. Leftists think we should all accept that for the greater good. But what good is greater than people not starving!-- especially when so many of those people in question are innocent children. Foreign aid, peace-keeping missions, social safety nets: none of these things have come even close to saving the amount of innocent young lives as freeing up markets, especially in places like China. The precipitous drop in Chinese infant mortality brought on by trade liberalisation should have been front page news every day for the past 20 years. How could such a dramatic increase in the welfare of humankind have gone so unheralded? Every single selfish, pointless government regulation or program that gets in the way of that kind of progress literally sickens adults and starves children throughout the world. I'm talking about cotton subsidies, textile tarrifs, and corporate welfare. And yes I'm also talking about artificially affordable housing, socialized education, and the ordinary type of welfare. These programs not only dull and hinder our own populace, but by slowing down the global engines of prosperity, they are actually costing countless lives. Where is the outrage over that? Where are the bleeding-heart celebrities, and the chest-beating protesters? They're so eager to join battles for the oppressed, why aren't they participating in this one? Well, they are, just on the wrong side. It is their attempts to fix the world's problems that are creating those problems in the first place. And why is this so? Not because they are immoral or two-faced. It's simply a case of economic illiteracy. Strident activists can understand factories paying workers too little for their liking or big chains elbowing out local stores. But, freedom to pursue profit leading to competition, leading to efficiency, leading to greater global wealth, leading to more babies not starving is perhaps one or two plot points too long for the average do-gooder. And that is a shame. More than that, it's a tragedy.

2 Comments:

At 10:51 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

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At 7:55 AM, Blogger Daniel said...

China is certainly not a free market society, and I did not imply that it was. But it is its economic liberalization, such as it is, that is reducing infant mortality. Even organizations that lean toward the left of the spectrum, like Unicef and Oxfam, recognize that. I highly doubt their studies ever show legislated "time off for families" as a significant factor in reducing infant mortality.

What you may call "social responsibility" is the government forcibly taking over functions that the market would perform better. If by nationalizing or over-regulating an industry that provides something society needs, you make it less effective, that seems quite irresponsible to me. What good has your "social responsibility" done to the American underclass so far? It has only kept them poor.

 

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