Free People, Free Minds, Free Markets
For more than fifteen years, free trade has been my business and my inspiration, based on the belief that economic freedom is fundamental to individual liberty.
In the 18th-century, Adam Smith left us with the indelible image of markets producing desirable social outcomes through the work of an "invisible hand." But when I think about markets, I think about 300 million pairs of very visible American hands, whose owners are making decisions everyday about priorities for themselves and their families. Our decisions about what to buy, from where, and at what price, where to work, for whom, and at what wage, shape our American markets. Six billion pairs of hands worldwide make similar decisions about what is most important to them and to their families. Together, we are the world's markets, and when they are not free, we are not free.
Benjamin Franklin warned, "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security." So I am greatly concerned when I see popular opinion in the United States seeming to turn against free markets, the force that has created our prosperity and cemented our freedoms. It starts with a turning inward, a hunkering down, a rejection of things foreign, a natural if regrettable reaction to rapid globalization with its attendant instability. Taken a step further, such anti-market sentiments lend themselves toward buy-American and then buy-local preferences, or outright restrictions on the economic choices of governments, businesses, and then individuals. Taken to their logical conclusion, they lead to wholesale government interventions in markets, such that economic consequences are no longer determined by the choices made by individuals acting in their own best interests but by the choices made by a class of political "elites" acting for the whole according to their own political interests – however well intentioned.
Such command economies have been tried elsewhere – and their citizens have flocked to the shores of America and its promise of opportunity, social mobility, and most of all freedom. Where will the freedom-seekers of future generations go?
If the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has its way they will continue to come to America. Yesterday I witnessed the launch of the American Free Enterprise campaign at the U.S. Chamber headquarters in Washington, DC. The Chamber is a large organization, representing a diverse set of interests on a broad range of issues. It is unlikely that any one individual or company will agree with the Chamber position on every single issue, and I am no exception. But as long as the Chamber continues to be the beacon for American economic freedom, I will be proud to be part of the team.
Free people, free minds, free markets. They stand together or not at all.
Benjamin Franklin was full of wise political and economical advice. A Benjamin Franklin article just received the 'Top 100 Electricity Blogs' Award http://bit.ly/z8Ckp
Posted by: Ed Hird | October 19, 2009 at 08:38 PM