The Haitian Catastrophe

Right now, the most important thing we can do as average Americans is to donate to charitable relief organizations, budgets permitting. (Jennifer and I chose the Red Cross.) And we can offer our gratitude and support for Americans going to Haiti to help. The magnitude of destruction is overwhelming.

We must also denounce the lunacy of people like Pat Robertson, who said the earthquake was a result of a Haitian "pact to the devil." (Mercifully, Rick Warren said on his Twitter feed, "Labeling any natural disaster as God's judgment is nonsense.")

Then, as the dust settles, the majority of us not directly involved in relief efforts should contemplate how to mitigate the harm of such disasters in the future.

The first obvious thing to note about Haiti is that its government is corrupt and its people oppressed. The Heritage Foundation ranks Haiti as "mostly unfree," ranking 147 out of 179, behind Russia.

A second point to note is that the Haitian government knew the earthquake was coming and did little to prepare for it. As Cassie Rodenberg reports for Popular Mechanics:

Back in 2008, Eric Calais and Paul Mann, geophysicists who study fault lines in the Caribbean, predicted that Haiti would soon face such a devastating quake. ...

Calais says that because Haiti poses safety concerns and a difficult work environment with a poor road access system, it's been neglected by seismologists. ...

But his research didn't translate well enough to elicit safety precautions before the quake. Though Calais notes that earthquakes can't be prevented, he says there was enough advance warning for the Haitian government to make preparations, and, in fact, his team alerted the government four to five years beforehand.

"We've told the Haitian government that the Enriquillo fault is a major player," Calais says. "We've told them exactly where the fault is. We've told them how fast it was building up elastic energy, and we've told them that right now, if it was to go, it could produce a 7.2 in magnitude or larger event."

The government has worked with the team and listened to its foreboding reports, Calais says, but for the most part, Haiti has failed to implement emergency plans and restructure crucial buildings.

Economic liberty and a government constrained by the rule of just law is necessary for human life. Statism kills. Corrupt governments kill. Stifling economic development kills.

Michelle Malkin points to a post by Jim Roberts: "Long-term reforms for Haitian democracy and its economy are also badly overdue." (I profoundly disagree with Roberts's calls to violate economic liberty at home through forced wealth transfers in order to promote economic reform in Haiti.)

John Stossel refers to the excellent summary of the matter by economist Don Boudreaux:

The ultimate tragedy in Haiti isn't the earthquake; it's that country's lack of economic freedom. The earthquake simply but catastrophically revealed the inhuman consequences of this fact.

Registering 7.0 on the Richter scale, the Haitian earthquake killed tens of thousands of people. But the quake that hit California's Bay Area in 1989 was also of magnitude 7.0. It, though, killed only 63 people.

This difference is due chiefly to Americans' greater wealth. With one of the freest economies in the world, Americans build stronger homes and buildings, and have better health-care and better search and rescue equipment. In contrast, burdened by one of the world's least-free economies, Haitians cannot afford to build sturdy structures. Nor can they afford the health-care and emergency equipment that we take for granted here in the U.S.

These stark facts should be a lesson for those who insist that human habitats are made more dangerous, and human lives put in greater peril, by freedom of commerce and industry.

If you want to live, if you want to promote human life, you must advocate capitalism.

The Nobility of Capitalism

Today the Denver Post published an attack on capitalism by Daniel W. Brickley of Littleton. Following is my reply:

Capitalism: The Only Moral System

I’ll untangle Brickley's many confusions. Capitalism protects people's right to live their own lives and interact voluntarily with others, by their own judgment, free from political controls. Capitalism means a system in which individuals rights to property and contract are consistently protected. In capitalism, the job of the government is to protect people from force and fraud.

To the degree that politicians interfere in the market, that is not capitalism, but its opposite. If "bribed governments" grant to some businesses political advantages to seize wealth by force or forcibly harm competitors, that is not "unregulated capitalism;" it is a market controlled to some degree by politicians.

Capitalism is regulated (made regular) first by a government that protects against force and fraud, and second by the independent judgment of individuals. If you don't like a company's products or services, don't buy them! If you think you can do better, you are free to try. But this is not the sort of "regulation" that the enemies of capitalism have in mind. Instead, they call on politicians to control the economy and violate people's rights.

Brickley is right about one thing: capitalism is incompatible with pure democracy. Capitalism protects individual rights. Pure democracy is mob rule, it is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner, it is 51 percent of the population enslaving the other 49 percent.

Brickley calls capitalism, the only system compatible with the reasoning mind of man, a "religion," and equates it with Soviet communism. This is pure projection. For the full justification of capitalism, see Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Capitalism is marked by men of drive and genius developing the goods and services -- the health care, the technology, the food, the housing, the cars -- we need to thrive. Their motive is to produce life-enhancing products and exchange them voluntarily with others for their personal gain. No motive could be more noble.

As for nastiness, we need look no further than Brickley's smear campaign against capitalism and capitalists.

Ari Armstrong
http://www.freecolorado.com/

Majority Favors Capitalism

Rasmussen reports that "53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism," while 20 percent favor socialism and 27 percent don't know.

Here's the worse news: "Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided."

The problem with the report and the survey question is that people's understanding of the terms varies radically. Many think that the massive-statist George W. Bush epitomized capitalism. Many conflate capitalism with modern corporatism, the meshing of corporations and government. Many think institutions such as the Federal Reserve comport with capitalism. The American economy today is not capitalistic, but mixed, with elements of freedom and controls.

So, while I'm heartened that most people at least have a favorable impression of capitalism and a disfavorable impression of socialism, the key is to educate people about what capitalism means, how it protects freedom and individual rights, and how it fosters prosperity.

Capitalism In Two Minutes

After my dad and I wrote a column criticizing candidates for their general inability to defend capitalism, one of the candidates asked us if we could defend capitalism in two minutes. Granted that it's easier to write something down than to come up with it spontaneously, following is what I came up with (which obviously owes a great deal to Ayn Rand):

Capitalism is the only economic system that recognizes the right of each individual to his own life and pursuit of happiness. Under capitalism, the government's sole responsibility is to protect individual rights, including the right to life, the right to control one's own property consistent with the equal rights of others, and the right to interact voluntarily. No person may use force against any other except in lawful self-defense.

Capitalism does not mean today's mixed economy, in which some property is held by individuals, some by the government, in which politicians control most aspects of the economy with reams of controls, in which nearly half of all produced wealth is forcibly redistributed by politicians. Do not blame capitalism for the current economic mess, which was caused by government-controlled lending institutions and political rules that forced other lenders to make risky loans.

Capitalism is the only system that recognizes the right of each individual to live by his own judgment. Each person is free to choose what to study, how long to study, what career to pursue, when to change careers, how long to work, where to live, where to shop, and where to recreate. However, no person may force anyone else to provide any good, service, job, or relationship. To get something from someone else, each individual must freely trade to get it or rely on gifts given voluntarily. Because each individual acts on his own judgment, capitalism is the system geared to the production of wealth. Individuals can make economic mistakes, but when they do they are less able to induce others to exchange goods and services. Capitalism thus forbids all political action beyond the protection of rights as instances of force, the effect of which is to disrupt the rational plans of individuals as they produce and interact. Capitalism rewards good judgment and productivity, leading to an increasingly wealthy society in which any honest, hard-working person can prosper and the most productive can keep what they richly deserve.