prudence@trw-unix.UUCP (06/17/83)
First off, I would like to welcome tbray to this group. We
love it, too.
Next, I must disagree with his statement:
Lassez-faire went by the board with the introduc-
tion of laws banning indentured child labour over
100 years ago, and there has been no such animal
ANYWHERE for about three generations. Every demo-
cratic government in the world closely regulates
its private sector.
This just is not true. Three nations come immediately to mind:
Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Singapore. All three have what comes
close to being laissez-faire economies, and all three are far
more prosperous than their neighbors. This is astonishing con-
sidering what disadvantages they have. They are all very densely
populated, they have few natural resources, they can't even feed
themselves without huge food imports, yet they have very high
standards of living, coupled with political freedoms, personal
liberties, and high respect for human rights. Compare the qual-
ity of life in Hong Kong with the life in Communist China, the
life in Singapore with life in Burma, life in Switzerland with
life in Hungary. In fact, poor, barren Switzerland has the
second highest per-capita income in the world, second only to
oil-slimy Kuwait.
I am sorry to make such smug pronouncements, because I know
they infuriate my opponents, but I will reiterate my posi-
tion. A laissez-faire economy is the only one consistent
with prosperity and freedom. Tbray is correct, however,
that such an economy has gone nearly by the board. Such
economies were much more common in the nineteenth century,
an era marked by rapid increases in the quality of life,
economically, politically, and even artistically. We are
all the poorer for the abandonment of proven economic formu-
las.
Prudence
{ucbvax,decvax}!trw-unix!prudence