Wednesday, April 28, 2010

by Tony Blankley

Townhall.com – link to original article

by Herbert I. London

Pajamas Media?- link to original article

October 22, 2009

During the recent Jewish holidays I heard one rabbi after another speak of “social justice.” Uttered with remarkable sincerity, this expression and its meaning elude me. I recognize justice as the adjudication of competing positions in a court of law and in accordance with the Constitution and its precedents. But what is social justice?

I’m not naïve. From Sharpton to Wright, social justice has come to mean redressing the wrongs of the past in the form of government benefits or reparations. The expression has a hint of retribution as in “you owe us.” In actuality, the words haven’t any real meaning. There are always those who grieve, and as long as the government attempts to satisfy those with a gripe, the plaintive cry for social justice will have irresistible appeal.

Justice is rarely social unless, of course, it is categorical as was the case with the Holocaust. In most instances justice is personal, e.g., seeking retribution for a contractual violation. Even if one were to attempt to redress the evil of slavery, how would one do so? Not every black person in the United States is a child of slavery. Moreover, people do not live in slavery — here at any rate — and race is not a barrier to success as President Obama and a host of corporate leaders demonstrate.

That the expression lives leads to confusion and discontent. There are principles on which the nation rests such as the rule of law, respect for private property, free expression, and individual rights. But social justice is not among them, albeit its radical antecedent ensures its place in the contemporary protest movement.

For many, social justice is a form of egalitarianism. Why, it is sometimes asked, should a few have so much and the many so little? This is the fairness gambit. Overlooked by acolytes of this position is that individualism on which this nation has put a premium is often at odds with economic equality. If people are free to pursue their goals, some are likely to be more successful than others.

The government has attempted to legislate a form of egalitarianism through progressive taxation. But even with a progressive tax designed to reduce the wealth of the most successful Americans, income disparity cannot be eliminated. Unless you change human nature and incentives as the Soviet Union unsuccessfully attempted, economic equality (read: social justice) is unattainable.

It is instructive that so-called progressives want to gain control of the state in order to bring about social justice. However, whenever this effort has been successful the progressives or radicals end up rewarding themselves and impoverishing those they claim to represent. Poor people are invariably subject to this political protest chant, but most know that it is a fiction borne of demagoguery.

Life is not fair — an observation everyone understands intuitively. The rich want something they cannot buy and the poor covet what the rich already have. If there is psychic justice, it is found in religion where every believer is equal in God’s eyes. But in the City of Man, social justice is a chimera, often sought but impossible to attain.

Perhaps it is time to inter this notion, bury it deep into the past. Of course, that isn’t likely to occur when so many are committed to its retention. They will parade across our streets calling for social justice as if they had any idea what it is they are seeking.

This is the lamentation of our age, a chant of frustration and desire. As long as governments seek to address this apparent concern manifest as passion, there will be reinforcement for the employment of these empty words. Listen carefully and you will hear the words “social justice” at any protest rally. This is a case of reifying fake ideology.

Economic liberty is key to societal well-being.

By RYAN STREETER AND ARTHUR C. BROOKS

Wall Street Journal Oct 26, 2009 – link to original

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, the performance of market economies has been a powerful theme in assessing the health of societies around the world. But free enterprise has come under attack with the global economic crisis, the perceived threat of climate change, and a broader concern—most recently promoted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy—that growth alone does not indicate prosperity.

And at first glance, this year’s Prosperity Index, published yesterday by the Legatum Institute, seems to provide evidence that capitalism is in trouble. The index aims to be a holistic measure of societal well-being, measuring not only things like economic freedom and property rights but also factors such as education, health, and good governance. The Institute found that four of the five most prosperous countries are democracies of Northern Europe: Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway—all well-known as high-tax, social welfare states. And while the U.S. and U.K. rank ninth and 12th respectively, France, Germany and Spain are not far behind. Fourteen of the top 20 countries are European. So does that mean capitalism needs to be reigned in as many of its critics consider? Far from it.

Consider the Wall Street Journal/Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom, which measures the key factors in political and economic freedom, such as strength of democratic checks and balances, protection of property rights, enforcement of contracts, ease of starting a business, and of hiring and firing staff. Due to their strongly capitalist systems, Hong Kong and Singapore score very highly in the WSJ index. Their lower personal freedoms and scores on interpersonal trust and community engagement drag them down to 18th and 23rd respectively on the Prosperity Index. Similarly, the top performers of Northern Europe do not do as well in the WSJ Index as they do in the Prosperity Index, since their economic fundamentals are not stellar.

Many people—especially Americans—think of wealth as the basis of health and happiness, too. In other words, market economies with good economic fundamentals drive us to more fulfilling lives. Europeans often counter that a narrow pecuniary viewpoint gives a distorted picture of the human experience. Worse yet, it can lead to the tyranny of materialism. Who is right?

A statistical analysis of both indexes shows that economic prosperity and more holistic indicators overlap significantly, but not completely. It’s no coincidence that the Prosperity Index calls its economic and democracy sub-indexes the drivers of wealth, and implicitly, prosperity. If one strips out the three main economic sub-indexes from the Prosperity Index, one can compile a ranking from the six remaining sub-indexes that have more to do with quality of life than economic growth. Using statistical techniques, one can test how much of the WSJ Index explains the Prosperity Index’s broader well-being indicators. The relationship is statistically significant, with just under two thirds of Legatum’s well-being indicators explained by economic and political freedom.

While free enterprise is not the only important factor explaining national differences in well-being, it probably does explain most of it. This means subverting the mechanisms of free enterprise would not just lead to lower economic growth but also lower social scores. The fact that the Nordic countries do so well in the Prosperity Index has largely to do with the fact that apart from their welfare policies, they also encourage entrepreneurship, free trade, and have stable monetary policies—even as they employ strong rhetoric against capitalism. Finland, Sweden and Denmark all score higher than Switzerland and nearly all of their southern European counterparts on their capacity to commercialize innovation, through factors such as business start-up procedures, business registration rates, and royalties on patents. All of this drives dynamic entrepreneurship, and spurs people to innovate and take risks, as they are more reassured that good ideas will pay off.

U.S. policy makers would do well to note this fact as they contemplate more “European” policies. And as the West contemplates ever tighter regulations on how and where money can be spent, lent and invested, their leaders should remember that economic and political liberty—while not the whole story—play a key role in prosperity. They are the engine driving much of what makes life worthwhile.

Mr. Streeter is a senior fellow of the Legatum Institute. Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute.

Is greed good? Yaron Brook responds

Voices of Reason bog (Ayn Rand Institute) - link to post

Dr. Brook is president and executive director of both the Ayn Rand Institute and the Ayn Rand Center

The answer to this question really depends on what you mean by “greed.” If you mean the pursuit of short-term gratification at any cost, then I do think greed defined that way is bad. And indeed what we’re seeing is some–certainly not as many as the media would lead you to believe–some businessmen, some CEOs are pursuing short-term self-gratification at the expense of long-term profit, long-term happiness, and the long-term success of their shareholders, to whom they owe a fiduciary duty. Ayn Rand would be disgusted by this behavior-but she wouldn’t be surprised. She portrayed this kind of CEO in Atlas Shrugged, in characters such as Orren Boyle and James Taggart.

If by “greed” you mean a long-term, rational pursuit of profit, however, then that in my view is a virtue, not a vice. CEOs should be focused on the bottom line, on long-term profitability, on long-term shareholder wealth maximization. That form of greed is good, and I think the majority of CEOs in America still seek those goals.

Unfortunately, the regulatory system we have today encourages bad CEOs–the Orren Boyle/Jim Taggart type of CEO. The more regulated a business is, the more a CEO has to know how to deal with politicians. He has to be a schmoozer who’s a smooth talker at cocktail parties and knows how to lobby Congress for goodies, rather than a real businessman concerned with the bottom line. Without a regulatory regime, without laws impinging on economic activity, there’s no way for such people to gain an edge through political pull because there’s no political pull to be had. In a truly free market, the people who rise to the top are truly the most capable, the most rational, the best long-term thinkers. There’s no other way to succeed.

In this respect, what Ayn Rand’s philosophy offers is a different view of selfishness–a view of selfishness as the long-term rational pursuit of self-interest, with one’s own long-term happiness as the primary goal of one’s life. When selfishness is looked at in this way, it’s evident that such pursuits as lying, cheating, and stealing are not selfish. They’re not in one’s long-term self-interest and they’re not the way to achieve happiness.