Women’s Rights Under 20th Century Socialist Regimes
One method for defending socialist governments like the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea, is to argue that they championed women’s rights. A commenter on Instagram, for example, lauds the Soviet Union for being “the FIRST country in recorded history to make marital rape illegal and legalized no fault divorce immediately after the revolution…” Others have praised North Korea and China for passing legislation that encourages greater gender equality. Socialist dictators are portrayed as progressives whose hearts were in the right place, even if their economic policies resulted in less than ideal outcomes.
Here are some reasons why I think women living in 20th century socialist regimes had fewer rights than their counterparts in capitalist nations:
In the Soviet Union, women were denied the right to own property and the right to live where they choose. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson write that Joseph Stalin’s government forced women and men in rural areas to work in collective farms so he could exploit their labor and produce to fund the industrial sector. This horrific system of collectivization stifled production and starved farmers, and Acemoglu and Robinson estimate that “probably six million people died of famine” from 1928 to 1933 and “hundreds of thousands of others were murdered or banished to Siberia…” (p. 126).
In North Korea, women are denied the right to wear what clothes and accessories they wish. Eunhee Park, a North Korean refugee, writes that “In 2008, Kim Jong Il issued an order that ‘women’s hair must not be longer than a fist below the ears…’” (p. 89) because any other style would be perceived as too capitalistic. Inspectors were assigned throughout the country to examine women and punish those who did not comply. Park writes that she was slapped by an inspector and forced to stand on the street for hours to punish her “for wearing earrings and flared jeans” (p. 90).
In North Korea, women are denied the right to have political opinions that oppose the government. Andrei Lankov writes that under the reign of Kim Il-Sung, “…some 0.6 to 0.7 percent of the country’s population were political prisoners” (p. 46) and that there were an estimated 154,000 female and male political prisoners in 2011. Imagine if Donald Trump or Joe Biden had the power to throw you in prison for having a negative conversation about them with a family member.
In many socialist nations in Africa, women were denied the right to buy and sell commodities at voluntarily negotiated prices. Magatte Wade describes how the postcolonial government in Ghana instituted price controls making it illegal for people to sell various products above a certain price. Women in Ghana were those who predominantly bought and sold in the market, and the socialist President Jerry Rawlings blamed them for not conforming to his and his predecessor’s socialist vision. Bureaucrats in charge of enforcing price controls would beat, fine, and imprison women who violated the price controls. Wade writes that the economist George Ayittey had a female member of his family “jailed for three years of hard labor for making an illegal profit of $1.50 on a loaf of bread” (p. 65).
In China, women were denied the right to read the books that they wanted. Frank Dikotter writes that in China under Mao Zedong, books that were not approved by the Communist Party of China were banned and destroyed. Many books that portray the Communist Party of China in a negative light are still banned to this day. Dikotter notes that in one example: “In Shanghai, a total of 237 tonnes of books were destroyed or sold as scrap paper between January and December of 1951” (p. 190). Imagine how large a bookstore would be if it were dedicated to only selling books that have been banned in China. In China, women were also denied the right to choose the size of their families. Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley, citing the work of Chelsea Follett, write that China sought to reduce the size of its population, believing that an increasing population would exacerbate poverty. China’s one-child policy resulted in hundreds of millions of women from 1980 to 2014 who were sterilized or given IUDs modified to be impossible to remove without surgery. In addition, people who violated the policy faced punishing fees, “usually around 5 to 10 times a person’s annual disposable income” (p. 63). Not surprisingly, this discriminated against poor women, since rich women could pay the fines but “the poor were often bankrupted, spending years of their lives paying the fees off” (p. 63).
This is just a small sampling of the many restrictions that were placed on men and women living in socialist nations around the world. Women and men should be wary of political movements which seek to restrict economic freedom and empower government to redistribute resources in the name of “social justice”.
— Colin Braman
References
Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson (2012). Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Currency.
Frank Dikotter (2013). The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957. Bloomsbury.
Chelsea Follett (2020). “Neo-Malthusianism and Coercive Population Control in China and India: Overpopulation Concerns Often Result in Coercion.” Cato Institute. Retrieved from: https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/neo-malthusianism-coercive-population-control-china-india-overpopulation-concerns .
Andrei Lankov (2013). The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia. Oxford University Press.
Eunhee Park (2025). The Courage to Die: A North Korean Woman’s Escape and Rebirth in Freedom. Self-Published.
Marian Tupy & Gale Pooley (2023). Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet. Cato Institute.
Magatte Wade (2023). The Heart of a Cheetah: How We Have Been Lied to about African Poverty—and What That Means for Human Flourishing. Cheetah Press.
“Planned” vs. “Unplanned” Economies
I think what sometimes attracts people to socialism is the belief that having a plan is superior to having no plan at all. A socialist government guided by expert planners can direct resources to meet the needs of all its citizens. Capitalist societies, on the other hand, are chaotic, unplanned, and only meet the needs of the elite. Ludwig von Mises argues that this is a false dichotomy. The choice between capitalism and socialism is not between an unplanned economy and a planned economy; it is between allowing millions of people the freedom to follow their own plans, versus forcing millions of people to follow the plans of politicians and bureaucrats. Mises writes that the tyranny of excessive planning by the government “deprive[s] all other people of the power to plan and act according to their own plans…” and aims for “the exclusive absolute pre-eminence of [its] own plan” (1951, p. 15).
The Soviet Union was once held as a shining example of the tremendous economic growth that can occur under a meticulously planned economy. Soviet economists Nikolai Shmelev and Vladimir Popov dispel this myth, making the case in 1989 that the Soviet Union was vastly inferior to Western nations in meeting people’s basic needs, and these poorer economic outcomes were the result of government planning. Soviet leaders and experts found it impossible to successfully coordinate where resources were to be allocated, what commodities should be produced, how they should be produced, and how they should be priced. Removing the profit incentive and ignoring price signals resulted in chronic shortages and surpluses of necessities. Shmelev and Popov observe that in market economies, shortages are rare because as a commodity becomes scarcer, its price rises, which leads customers to economize or seek substitutes. The high prices also incentivize profit-seeking producers to increase production. Shortages are usually the result of government price controls. Shmelev and Popov write that government plans had to be constantly revised, and the “rigidly planned” Soviet economy could not change prices and redirect resources fast enough to correct for changing complex conditions (p. 89). Although Shmelev and Popov still believed in the ideals of socialism, they concluded that what the Soviets needed to eliminate shortages and surpluses and increase productivity, were not better and more detailed plans, but more individuals pursuing their own plans: “Right now, as desperately as we need the air we breathe, we need enterprises—both large and small—in every sector of the economy, working without plan, simply by agreement and contract with other enterprises and organizations” (p. 215).
— Colin Braman
References
Ludwig von Mises (2009). Planned Chaos: An excerpt from Socialism: An Economic & Sociological Analysis (1951). Mises Institute.
Nikolai Shmelev, & Vladimir Popov (1989). The Turning Point: Revitalizing the Soviet Economy. Doubleday.
Did the High Tax Rates of the 1950s Create American Prosperity?
The Instagram account @whoprofitsfromourpain posted a reel in which the author argued in favor of high marginal income tax rates, stating: “In the 1950s, the US had its largest middle class in the country’s history, and it also had a top wealth tax rate of 91%. Is that a coincidence? No. This high tax rate did two things. First, it raised revenue to fund things like the GI Bill, which made college cheap for the middle class, unlike today…”
Yes, tax rates on the wealthiest Americans were high in the 50s and 60s, but did these high tax rates translate into greater tax revenues? Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund, and John Early (2024) argue this is unlikely because very few Americans actually paid the 91% tax rate. They state that in 1962 “…only 447 tax filers out of 71 million” (p. 117) paid the 91% tax rate. It’s unlikely that funding for the GI Bill came entirely from taxes paid by these 447 people. In recent years, the top income tax rate has been around 35%-- much lower than it was in the 1960s. What’s interesting is that even though taxes are lower, the top 1% pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes now than they did in the 1960s. Gramm, Ekelund and Early state that in 2020 the top 1% paid an average of 25.7% of their income in federal taxes, while in 1962 “The top 1 percent of income earners on average paid 16.1 percent of their income in federal income and payroll taxes…” (p. 117). If your goal is to confiscate more tax revenue from the wealthy, a 91% top tax rate may not be the best idea.
The author goes on to state: “Secondly, it disincentivized business owners from taking egregiously large salaries. Business owners were instead incentivized to reinvest or increase employee wages, which led to a broader distribution of wealth”
Many politicians alive in the 1960s would disagree that high tax rates were contributing to economic growth. President John F. Kennedy, in a special message to congress in 1963, argued in favor of cutting income and corporate taxes, stating: “…our present income tax rate structure now holds back consumer demand, initiative, and investment…our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort--thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate.” Historically, the wealthy have avoided paying these high tax rates by exploiting legal loopholes. Thomas Sowell (2011) writes that the top marginal tax rate in the 1920s was also very high, but instead of investing in business and workers’ wages, the wealthy simply reported lower incomes “…by putting their money into tax exempt securities or by any of the other ways of rearranging their financial affairs to minimize their tax liability” (p. 150). If high marginal income tax rates do not raise more revenue from the super wealthy and they discourage business investment, then we should consider alternative methods of dealing with income inequality.
References
Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund, & John Early (2024). The Myth of American Inequality: How Government Biases Policy Debate. Rowman & Littlefield.
John F. Kennedy (1963). “Special Message to the Congress on Tax Reduction and Reform.” The American Presidency Project. Retrieved from: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-tax-reduction-and-reform
Thomas Sowell (2011). Intellectuals and Society. Basic Books.
George Ayittey on the Failure of Foreign Aid
Recently, the libertarians and conservatives on X are calling for an end to all foreign aid. This sounds like a cruel and unjust proposal until you start asking whether the billions we have spent on foreign aid have had a positive impact.
I believe it’s good that people are charitable to one another, but giving money to the wrong people at the wrong time under the wrong conditions can make situations worse. The Ghanaian economist George Ayittey argues that aid in its various forms given to the governments of developing nations has not been effective in reducing poverty or promoting growth. Western nations have been anything but stingy when it comes to providing humanitarian, military, and financial aid. Ayittey, in his free book Applied Economics for Africa, states that “…since 1960, the West has poured in more than [p. 167] $600 billion to support various programs [in Africa]. But all that foreign aid failed to spur economic growth, promote democracy, liberate the African people, or lift them out of poverty” (p. 167-168).
Why has foreign aid failed to promote economic growth in developing nations like those in Africa? Ayittey lays the blame on both the donors and the recipients. Donors and lenders fund programs that serve contradictory goals, they push the projects and programs they think the people need instead of consulting with the people about what they need, and aid is given to corrupt government officials who then embezzle the funds or waste them by funding unproductive state enterprises and vanity infrastructure projects. Richard Posner suggests that government-to-government economic aid may exacerbate the problems it aims to solve, serving as a bail out to help poorly run governments “…avoid grappling with the political, social, and economic conditions… that are impeding economic development” (p. 360). Magatte Wade writes that one of these conditions impeding economic development in African nations is the stifling regulations that prevent honest entrepreneurs from creating wealth and jobs. African nations have some of the worst business environments in the world. To those who argue that capitalism is the cause of the poverty in African nations, Wade says “Noooooo!!!!! We Africans are poor because we have not been allowed to create companies—precisely because of layer after layer of government bureaucracy that is profoundly un-African” (p. 107).
References
George Ayittey (2018). Applied Economics for Africa. Atlas Network. Retrieved from: https://www.africanliberty.org/appliedeconomics/
Gary Becker & Richard Posner (2009). Uncommon Sense: Economic Insights, from Marriage to Terrorism. The University of Chicago Press.
Magatte Wade (2023). The Heart of a Cheetah: How We Have Been Lied to about African Poverty—and What That Means for Human Flourishing. Cheetah Press.
African Nations Need More Capitalism
Many people in the field of program and policy evaluation are hostile to capitalism. Poverty and inequality in the Global South are blamed mostly on Western capitalist exploitation, and the private sector is not trusted to lift people out of poverty (see Mathison, 2016; Picciotto, 2023). The entrepreneur Magatte Wade (2023), a native of Senegal, disagrees with this assessment, arguing that what keeps many African nations in poverty today are corrupt governments that are hostile to economic freedom and private enterprise. Greater economic freedom is what many African nations need to prosper.
Wade describes how starting a legitimate business in an African nation like Senegal is nearly impossible due to the labyrinth of laws and regulations. Creating an LLC is a months-long process requiring thousands of dollars, while in the United States the process takes minutes. Tariffs and other trade restrictions force business owners to pay up to 45 percent more for business supplies than in the US. Corrupt government officials use these regulations to extract bribes from those lucky enough to afford to pay. It is no wonder that according to the “World Bank’s Doing Business (DB) index” (p. 190), Africa has thirteen of the twenty worst nations to do business. Without entrepreneurs starting enterprises and creating wealth, there can be no poverty reduction.
Wade writes that “Not one single person can deny that if African nations provided business environments that were as effective and streamlined as those of New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, or Denmark…then Africa would become more prosperous” (p. 144). But convincing people that private property rights and the profit motive in a market economy are the key, and not a barrier, to eliminating poverty is a difficult task.
References
Sandra Mathison (2016). “Confronting Capitalism: Evaluation That Fosters Social Equity.” In Stewart Donaldson & Robert Picciotto (Eds.). Evaluation for an Equitable Society. Information Age Publishing. p. 83-107.
Robert Picciotto (2023). Evaluation transformation implies its decolonization. Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation, 19(44). p. 131-141.
Magatte Wade (2023). The Heart of a Cheetah: How We Have Been Lied to about African Poverty—and What That Means for Human Flourishing. Cheetah Press.
Why Mao’s Great Leap Forward Failed
There was a semi-viral clip a few months ago showing Hasan Piker receive a first edition of Chairman Mao Zedong’s little red book of quotations on a much publicized trip to China. To me, the most valuable thing about Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book is its ability to illustrate how socialist dictators say one thing and then do the opposite. Mao predicted that a government-controlled economy serving the common good would create untold abundance in China, stating that “The changeover from individual to socialist, collective ownership in private industry and commerce is bound to bring about a tremendous liberation of the productive forces. Thus, the social conditions are being created for a tremendous expansion of industrial and agricultural production” (p. 12).
The Communist Party of China tried to implement utopian socialist policies between 1958 and 1962, commonly referred to as the Great Leap Forward. Instead of working for the common good, these disastrous policies were responsible for creating a famine that resulted in the deaths of anywhere from 36 million Chinese people, according to Yang Jisheng, and 45 million according to Frank Dikotter. Yang (2008) notes that the famine was one of a kind, writing “It is a tragedy unprecedented in world history for tens of millions of people to starve to death and to resort to cannibalism during a period of normal climate patterns with no wars or epidemics” (p. 14). Thankfully, in spite of the Communist Party’s efforts to conceal the causes and impact of the famine, Liu Shaoqi’s statement to Mao in 1962 that “History will record the role you and I played in the starvation of so many people, and the cannibalism will also be memorialized” has come true thanks to dedicated scholars (Yang, 2016, p. 15).
Many government interventions contributed to the famine. Dikotter (2010) says that one especially significant intervention was the government taking ownership of the means of production and forcing farmers into communes, writing that “In the pursuit of a utopian paradise, everything was collectivized, as villagers were herded together in giant communes which heralded the advent of communism…” (p. xi). Markets and prices dictated by supply and demand were replaced with government control over the nation’s resources. Farmers had to sell their produce to the state and the surplus grain was sold to pay off government debts to foreign nations. Farmers were forced to try and increase their crop yields by digging deep trenches to plant their grain and planting crops too close together. A large portion of the workforce was diverted from farming and instead directed to work on massive irrigation and infrastructure projects, many of which were abandoned or had to be demolished sometime later. Their labor was also diverted into smelting poor quality steel in backyard furnaces to speed up industrialization. Local officials exaggerated how much grain was being produced, which resulted in the government extracting larger amounts of surplus grain from starving peasants.
Party secretaries created a façade on Chairman Mao’s train route to lie about the campaign’s success. Mao’s personal physician Dr. Li Zhisui (1994) writes that “What we were seeing from our windows…was staged, a huge multi-act nationwide Chinese opera performed especially for Mao.” Officials purposefully built smelting furnaces near the train tracks and “…party secretary Wang Renzhong had ordered the peasants to remove rice plants from faraway fields and transplant them along Mao’s route, to give the impression of a wildly abundant crop.” (p. 278). Yang (2016) contends that the disastrous Great Leap Forward policies were able to continue as long as they did “because China had no freedom of the press and no opposition party” (p. 10). The people of China have achieved significant economic growth in recent decades, but not because of Chairman Mao’s socialist fantasies. Daren Acemoglu and James Robinson (2012) conclude that who we should thank for China’s economic improvement today are “…Deng Xiaoping and his allies, who, after Mao Zedong’s death, gradually abandoned socialist economic policies and institutions…” (p. 63).
— Colin Braman
References
Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson (2012). Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Currency.
Frank Dikotter (2010). Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962. Bloomsbury.
Li Zhisui (1994). The Private Life of Chairman Mao. Random House.
Mao Zedong (1966). Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (2nd ed.). Unknown Publisher.
Yang Jisheng (2016). The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Picador.
Yang Jisheng (2012). Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine 1958-1962. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. [originally published in 2008].
Capitalism and Child Labor
There is a myth that says capitalism is responsible for child labor and the only thing standing between children and greedy exploiters are child labor laws. The truth is that capitalism is the reason why there are fewer children working per capita today than in centuries past. According to Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley, one factor that led to a decrease in child labor was the greater abundance of food and other necessities produced by labor-saving machines, writing that “Prior to mechanization of agriculture, which increased farm productivity, there were no food surpluses to sustain idle hands, not even those of children” (p. 301). Throughout the centuries, children had to work in order to survive. As production became more efficient and workers’ wages increased due to businesses competing for their labor, it “enabled more parents to forego their children’s labor and send them to school instead” (p. 302). This explains why there was a significant decrease in the use of child labor in the 19th and early 20th century before child labor laws were widely established. Robert Hessen in a contributing essay to Ayn Rand’s book CapitalismL The Unknown Ideal, writes that one group of people we should be thanking for reducing child labor are the capitalists who invest in better methods of production, writing that “Their efforts and investments in machinery led to a rise in real wages, to a growing abundance at lower prices, and to an incomparable improvement in the general standard of living” (Hessen, p. 120). None of this is to say that child labor laws shouldn’t exist, but if we are concerned about reducing child labor in poorer nations, then we might start by identifying those factors responsible for stifling the productivity of labor.
— Colin Braman
References
Marian Tupy & Gale Pooley (2023). Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet. Cato Institute.
Robert Hessen (1967). “The Effects of the Industrial Revolution on Women and Children.” In Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (p. 117-125).
“Artificial Intelligence Will Destroy Jobs, Impoverish the Masses, and Enrich the Elite”
The claim that labor-saving machinery makes the average citizen poorer by eliminating their jobs is older than the Industrial Revolution. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson describe how all the way back in 1589, William Lee created a stocking frame knitting machine that would produce far more textiles than could be made by hand. When he went to London to ask Queen Elizabeth for a patent, she denied his patent and is recorded as saying “Consider thou what the invention could do to my poor subjects. It would assuredly bring them to ruin by depriving them of employment, thus making them beggars” (p. 182-183). The Queen did not realize that increasing productivity is what improves the standard of living of the average citizen. Frédéric Bastiat satirized the claims made by those opposing automation in 1850, writing "'A curse on machines! Every year, their increasing power relegates millions of workmen to pauperism, by depriving them of work, and therefore of wages and bread. A curse on machines!'" (p. 29). One hundred and seventy-five years later, we have more labor-saving technology and yet have more jobs and abundance than in Bastiat's day.
Walter E. Williams writes that the reason we are wealthier today than they were in Bastiat's day is because we use more labor-saving technology, writing that our "…higher standards of living is a result of capital being used to replace labor, thereby freeing up that labor to undertake other tasks" (p. 55). Today, people argue that automation in the form of artificial intelligence poses a unique problem. In the past, machines still needed to be operated by a human, but AI can think and act for itself, which will finally bring about the unemployment apocalypse. Again, these same arguments about automation were made decades ago. For example, Henry Hazlitt writes that in the early 1960s "Automation was discussed as if it were something entirely new in the world. It was in fact merely a new name for continued technological advance and further progress in labor-saving equipment" (Hazlitt, One Lesson, p. 53).
Williams argues that the reason the feared outcomes of automation don't come to fruition on a large scale is that they assume there is a fixed number of jobs and there will be no use for the labor that has been replaced. Humans needs, however, are insatiable and there will always be use for labor to achieve those needs. Saifedean Ammous argues that no matter how much abundance we have in our society, humans can always imagine better alternatives and will labor to achieve them. He writes that "So long as humans are alive and need to decide what to do with their time, the economic problem exists, and humans attempt to solve it by working... There will never be complete satisfaction because human reason will always foresee a better possibility and work toward it" (p. 75).
I wonder if the economic principle of comparative advantage might be applicable in explaining why AI won’t eliminate all work. The principle of comparative advantage suggests that even if one group of people can produce everything better than another, it is still beneficial for that group of people to specialize in what it produces best and then exchange with groups that specialize in what they do best. Milton and Rose Friedman illustrate comparative advantage using the example of a lawyer and a secretary. Suppose a lawyer wants to hire a secretary but the lawyer discovers that he or she can type twice as fast as the secretary. Is it worth hiring the secretary? The Friedmans respond that “If the lawyer is twice as good a typist but five times as good a lawyer as his secretary, both he and the secretary are better off if he practices law and the secretary types letters” (p. 45). I think the same principle applies to AI. Even if AI and autonomous robots can do everything that humans do (or better), it is still limited by time, space, and energy, no matter how efficient it becomes. As it advances, it would still be beneficial to let AI specialize in what it does best and humans can specialize in what they do best.
But what about income and wealth inequality? Won’t the AI revolution primarily benefit the rich and make the rest of us poorer? It is true that those businesses that are first to successfully incorporate AI will likely experience massive profits because of decreases in production costs. Bastiat points out that when one business person saves money by adopting a labor-saving innovation, other businesses begin adopting the innovation, and “…soon competition obliges him to lower his prices in proportion to the saving itself; and then it is no longer the inventor who reaps the benefit of the invention—it is the purchaser of what is produced…” (p, 32). The ultimate outcome of producing more at a cheaper cost is greater abundance and cheaper prices for consumers.
References
Saifedean Ammous (2023). Principles of Economics. The Saif House.
Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson (2012). Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Currency.
Frédéric Bastiat (2011). The Bastiat Collection (2nd ed.). Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Milton Friedman & Rose Friedman (1990). Free to Choose: A Personal Statement. Harcourt, Inc. [originally published in 1979].
Henry Hazlitt (1979). Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics. Three Rivers Press.
Walter Williams (2011). Race & Economics: How Much can be Blamed on Discrimination? Hoover Institution Press.
Capitalism and Ugly Big Box Stores
Tucker Carlson has long been opposed the supposed excesses of capitalism in the United States. He has opposed production automation and complains about the abundance of Dollar Stores that are a visual blight on communities. He portrays a market-oriented economy as an object created in an ivory tower by libertarian economists which acts contrary to the will of the people at large, and its shortcomings must be corrected by government action. Thomas Sowell responds that the market is not a tool created in a university classroom for politicians to tinker with, but rather the market is simply millions of people exercising their right to produce and exchange goods and services with one another. Sowell writes that depicting the market as an object separate from the people who participate in it gives central planners permission to restrict "...the freedom of individuals to transact with one another on mutually agreeable terms, and to depict this restriction of their freedom as rescuing people from the 'dictates' of the impersonal market..." (p. 569). Dollar Stores exist because thousands of Americans prefer them to the available alternatives. Those who have contempt for ugly box stores and wish to eliminate them through government action are ultimately showing their contempt for the people who shop there. Milton Friedman writes that the reason central planners dislike the market economy so much is "It gives [people] what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself" (p. 19).
References
Milton Friedman (2020). Capitalism and Freedom. The University of Chicago Press. [originally published in 1962].
Thomas Sowell (2015). Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (5th Ed.). Basic Books.
Is North Korea Freer Than South Korea?
I have seen several apologists for the North Korean regime on social media argue that people in North Korea have more freedom than people living in South Korea (e.g., videos on the Instagram channel @behudaattv). One way we can tell which nation has more individual and economic freedom is to identify which nation will imprison or execute you and your family for possessing unapproved books or communication devices. Andrei Lankov in his book The Real North Korea describes how starting in the 1960s, the Kim Il Sung regime maintained a brutal surveillance and censorship state that far outmatched those of Stalinist Soviet Union and Maoist China. The North Korean government feared that if their people were exposed to liberal ideas or if they saw the affluence of the South Korean people after their economic boom in the 70s, the Kim regime would be overthrown. Under the reign of Kim Il Sung, foreign books were destroyed and foreign newspapers were prohibited. Even newspapers from the Soviet Union and China were banned for having too many liberal ideas. People wishing to view foreign publications at a library had to obtain a security clearance. Tunable radios were also banned to prevent citizens from listening to foreign broadcasts. Lankov writes that “From around 1960 onward, all radios officially sold in North Korea had fixed tuning, so that only a small number of official North Korean channels could be listened to” (p. 43). Anyone with a foreign radio had to turn it over to the police to disable the tuner and seal the radio so that the tuner could not be repaired. Police conducted random household searches to ensure all radios remained sealed. Even today, the Kim regime severely restricts foreign media to keep their people docile and brainwashed. Eunhee Park, a North Korean refugee, describes the fear she felt the first time she watched a South Korean television drama smuggled on her friend’s USB drive before her defection in 2012, stating “My hands trembled. I knew that if anyone found out I was watching a South Korean drama, it wouldn’t just mean prison—it could mean public execution” (p. 87). If you fear being sent to a labor camp or being publicly executed for watching a K-drama, you do not have freedom.
-- Colin Braman
References
Lankov, Andrei (2013). The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia. Oxford University Press.
Park, Eunhee (2025). The Courage to Die: A North Korean Woman’s Escape and Rebirth in Freedom. Self-Published.
What is “Liberalism”?
Some months ago, Katie Miller was criticized online for not knowing the difference between Classical Liberals and the Political Left. A co-founder of Anthropic said “My deep loyalty is to the principles of classical liberal democracy” and she confused “classical liberal” with so-called “Woke and deeply leftist ideology…” I don’t blame her for the confusion because right-wing commentators have been referring to the political Left as “liberals” for decades.
The beliefs of classical liberals, however, are very different from today’s progressive Left who have appropriated the term “liberal”. Classical liberals believe human beings have the right to free trade, own private property, and participate in democratic governments exercising limited powers. Ludwig von Mises, in his book Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, says that if liberalism could be described in one word, it would be “…property, that is, private ownership of the means of production… All the other demands of liberalism result from this fundamental demand” (p. 2). By “means of production” he is referring to the land, resources, and all the tools and machines that go into producing goods and services. If these means of production are owned by the government, then many of the human rights we cherish today would not exist. For example, freedom of speech would be an illusion if the government controls the printing presses and decides what books to publish. The term “libertarian” is sometimes used to describe both Classical Liberals and Anarcho-Capitalists. The primary difference between the two is that classical liberals believe there is a role for government to protect private property rights (p. 17). Anarcho-capitalists, on the other hand, believe that all functions that are typically carried out by governments (such as infrastructure, policing, or the judicial system) can and should be privatized and executed through voluntary cooperation. Murray Rothbard writes that this code of ethics is based on the Non-Aggression Axiom or Non-Aggression Principle, which is “that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else” unless it is in defense of your own property (p. 27).
-- Colin Braman
References
Ludwig von Mises (2005). Liberalism: The Classical Tradition. Liberty Fund, Inc. [originally written in German in 1927].
Murray Rothbard (1973). For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. Ludwig von Mises Institute.
“Looting Does No Real Harm; Businesses Have Insurance”
I remember hearing apologists for the riots and looting throughout the United States in 2020 claim that these actions have no negative impact on businesses and the community at large because insurance covers the destruction. Businesses can simply rebuild and the economy will go back to what it was before. Some even asserted that the riots served as a form of racial “reparations.” Frédéric Bastiat wrote a famous parable published in 1850—which we refer to today as the “Broken Window Fallacy”—that can shed light on why this belief makes no sense. Suppose a child breaks a shopkeeper’s window. The shopkeeper must now pay a glazier to replace the window. An observer in Bastiat’s parable argues that replacing the window had positive economic benefits; the glazier increased his or her income and the glazier then uses that money to purchase goods or services from someone else. What this argument ignores is the opportunity cost of replacing the window. Bastiat states that “It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way which this accident has prevented” (p. 3). In the case of the 2020 riots and looting, money, resources, and labor that could have been spent on building new homes, businesses, or providing other goods and services, are instead dedicated to fixing what was destroyed, resulting in economic regression for the community overall. Even though destroyed and looted businesses will be compensated by insurance companies, their insurance premiums will likely rise after such destruction and will encourage marginal producers to leave and discourage new businesses from opening because they can no longer afford to do business there.
Those who justify riots and looting as legitimate and productive forms of protest may not be considering the immediate and long-term impacts of these actions, especially on the poorest members of an affected community. One example of the devastating effects of riots comes from Detroit in the 1960s. Thomas Sowell writes that although black Americans living in Detroit had lower poverty rates, lower unemployment rates, and higher home ownership rates than black Americans overall, it was here that riots were most intense. Sowell argues that these riots turned an economically successful Detroit into “an economic disaster area…” for many years “…as businesses became reluctant to locate there, reducing access to both jobs and places to shop, and both black and white middle class people left for the suburbs” (p. 186). Activists cannot complain about underinvestment in low-income communities and then advocate for actions that discourage investment in the first place.
— Colin Braman
References
Frédéric Bastiat (2011). The Bastiat Collection (2nd ed.). Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Thomas Sowell (2011). Economic Facts and Fallacies (2nd ed.). Basic Books.
“Capitalists Keep Housing Scarce So They Can Rake in More Profits”
I cannot recall the source, but I remember seeing an Instagram video which claimed that the many abandoned housing units in New York is a result of landlords and investors trying to keep housing scarce so they can increase their profits. The shortage of housing probably has less to do with capitalist greed than it does with government regulation. Thomas Sowell argues that one reason you see so many abandoned dwelling units in places like New York City is because of their rent control laws. New York City has had rent control laws for longer than any other big city in the United States and it is littered with abandoned dwelling units. Instead of developers intentionally restricting the supply of housing (which does not make sense because why would they build the housing in the first place), Sowell writes that “…many buildings have been abandoned after their owners found it impossible to collect enough rent to cover the costs of services that they are required by law to provide” (p. 44). Sowell estimates that the number of empty dwellings in New York City greatly outnumber the thousands of homeless people live in the streets; which is purely a result of government regulation.
— Colin Braman
Reference
Thomas Sowell (2015). Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (5th Ed.). Basic Books.
The Persecution of Successful Minorities
Some people find it concerning when a minority group becomes too successful. The false belief that different groups would be equally represented and successful in all human endeavors if it were not for some form of injustice fuels envy and conspiracies to justify persecuting minorities. This phenomenon has occurred against many different groups throughout the world. Peter Bauer (1976) writes that in the past, resentment toward minorities has led to “…the persecution and expulsion of ethnic minorities, particularly those which have achieved prosperity from poverty—[such as the] Jews in Europe, Levantines and Indians in Africa, Chinese in South-east Asia” (p. 158). Walter E. Williams (2011) points to a relatively recent example of this envy toward successful minorities which resulted in “…the expulsion en masse of some 50,000 Asians from Uganda” in 1972 by the dictator Idi Amin (p. 12). When minority groups are disproportionately successful in some industry or endeavor, they are described as “controlling” that industry and taking more than their fair share of prosperity. Thomas Sowell (2002) writes that the Chinese have long faced persecution in countries like Indonesia because, despite being a small percentage of the population, they “controlled” most of the nation’s industries. But the Chinese didn’t come in and take over these industries from the native population; they created these industries in the first place, and they would likely not exist otherwise. Sowell writes that “It is no more strange that most of the capital in…[Indonesia] belongs to the Chinese than it is that most of the feathers in the world belong to birds. That is where feathers originate” (p. 63)
References
Peter Bauer (1976). Dissent on Development. Harvard University Press.
Thomas Sowell (2002). Controversial Essays. Hoover Institution Press.
Walter E. Williams (2011). Race & Economics: How Much can be Blamed on Discrimination? Hoover Institution Press.
More Trade Barriers Means More Corruption
US politicians tell us that we need to impose tariffs to stop foreign nations from ripping us off. Many economists disagree, arguing that it is not foreign nations but US businesses that rip off the American consumer by advocating for tariffs and import quotas. American consumers benefit when they are allowed to purchase the products they need at the cheapest cost, whether those products come from China, Brazil, California, or Florida. Walter E. Williams asked “Who can be against less expensive trade goods? You’ve got it. The businessmen and unions, and the congressmen who represent them” (1987, p. 74). Thomas Sowell writes that tariffs are taxes that benefit US businesses by making imports more expensive, “…and thus enable domestic producers to charge higher prices for competing products…” (2015, p. 495). Jobs in the protected industry are saved, but jobs in other industries disappear since consumers have less money to spend on other goods and services. We are led to believe that politicians restrict trade for the public good, but Left-leaning economist Paul Krugman argues that US trade policy has historically been a deeply corrupt process which primarily benefitted the politically connected. The disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tariffs of the 1930s, that many argue exacerbated the Great Depression, were passed because “…enough members of Congress were bought off, one way or another, to enact legislation that almost everyone knew was bad for the nation as a whole” (2021, p. 246). Douglas Irwin uses the US sugar industry as an example of how corruption can plague trade deals at the expense of consumers. Wealthy US sugar plantation owners spend thousands on lobbying and are rewarded with legislation that restricts the supply of imported sugar. These restrictions increase the profits of a small number of large plantation owners and increase prices for consumers. The result is that American food producers and consumers are charged around two or three times more for sugar than the rest of the world. Irwin observes that “The rationale for rewarding a few wealthy sugar producers with hundreds of millions of dollars every year at the expense of consumers has never been made clear” (2020, p. 91).
— Colin Braman
References
Douglas Irwin (2020). Free Trade Under Fire (5th ed.). Princeton University Press.
Paul Krugman (2021). Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future. W. W. Norton & Company.
Thomas Sowell (2015). Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (5th Ed.). Basic Books.
Walter E. Williams (1987). All it Takes is Guts: A Minority View. Regnery Books.
Is Wealth Inequality a Problem in a Market-Oriented Economy?
I saw an Instagram reel posted by Pietro Valetto (@pietrovaletto) in which he concludes that the United States today has roughly the same amount of wealth inequality as France did just before the French Revolution according to the Gini-coefficient. A large Gini-coefficient is often presented as a bad thing in and of itself. No doubt many program and policy evaluators would see large Gini-coefficients as problems to be rectified by greater government regulation and redistribution. Liberty-minded individuals do not see wealth inequality as inherently contrary to the common good, provided the wealth was achieved through voluntary transactions. I also question whether wealth inequality is a relevant metric for assessing whether the average person’s—or even the poorest person’s—standard of living is improving. Even if it’s true that wealth inequality is the same today as it was during the French Revolution, people today are still many times richer. If our standards of living have significantly improved but wealth inequality has remained the same, that suggests to me that wealth inequality does not matter all that much. By today’s material standards, the average person two to three hundred years ago lived a pretty miserable life. Deirdre McCloskey, writing in 2010, estimated that in 1800, “…the world’s economy stood at the present level of Bangladesh…[and] the average human consumed…a mere $3 a day…” adjusted for cost of living (Deirdre McCloskey, p. 1). Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley cite economists who estimate “…nearly 90 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty as late as 1820…defined as less than $1.90 per person per day (in 2015 dollars)” (p. 288). Today, less than 10% of the population lives in extreme poverty. Our average life expectancy is decades longer and we have more food, with Johan Norberg noting that “The French and English in the eighteenth century received fewer calories than the current average [p. 11] in sub-Saharan Africa…” (p. 12). These are just a few of the many improvements we have seen in our standard of living. One reason I don’t like comparing wealth inequality today to that of centuries past is because not all wealth is created equal. A king whose wealth is invested in a gilded palace and diamond throne is not the same as an entrepreneur who owns factories that produce consumer goods in a competitive market. Ludwig von Mises writes that a big difference between today’s world and that of centuries ago is that industry used to primarily to serve the needs of the ruling class, but after the industrial revolution, “…industries began to produce things that could be purchased by the general population…to satisfy the needs of the masses” (p. 3).
— Colin Braman
References
Deirdre McCloskey (2010). Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World. The University of Chicago Press.
Ludwig von Mises (2006). Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow (3rd ed.). Mises Institute. [originally published in 1979].
Johan Norberg (2017). Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. Oneworld.
Marian Tupy & Gale Pooley (2023). Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet. Cato Institute.
Socialism and Coercion
I saw an Instagram reel posted by Dante Munoz (@thedantemunoz) in which he argues that socialism is simply the employees owning the companies that they work for. To those who advocate for socialism, Walter E. Williams said “…I have absolutely no problem with people wanting socialism. My problem is when they want to drag me into it” (2008, p. 63). If socialists were simply people who went around establishing worker cooperatives, the pro-liberty crowd or “free-market ideologues” as Paul Krugman calls them, would have no objection. If workers’ cooperatives provide superior working conditions and productivity in a mostly free market, then privately-owned businesses would disappear on their own. Real socialism, however, requires government action to confiscate private property and force people to work in cooperatives whether they like it or not. Although “free market ideologues” like Ludwig von Mises believed that governments were necessary for a functioning modern society, he understood that “The characteristic feature of [government] activities is to compel people through the application or the threat of force to behave otherwise than they would like to behave…” (1974, p. 55). When socialists say they want the workers to own the means of production, they mean anybody who tries to start a privately owned business will be arrested and punished. Socialists may respond by saying “Who cares? We’re using force to achieve a better world. Besides, it’s the business owners that are engaging in coercion!” That’s a topic for another time, but we should be clear that socialism is the theft of private property through intimidation and coercion.
— Colin Braman
References
Ludwig von Mises (1974). Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War. Liberty Fund. [originally published in 1944].
Walter E. Williams (2008). Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism: Controversial Essays. Hoover Institution Press.
How Occupational Licensing Can Harm Consumers
Some New York legislators want to pass a bill that would make it illegal for AI chatbots to provide substantive advice that you would typically get from a licensed professional such as a lawyer, doctor, or engineer (https://hooperlundy.com/new-york-proposed-bill-would-ban-ai-chatbots-from-providing-medical-or-legal-advice/). There is some debate about how restrictive this law will actually be, but it still highlights potential downsides of professional licensure. In the United States, you need a license from a state government to practice one of many professions. The licensing boards that decide the licensure requirements are mostly made up of professionals in that field. Requiring minimum standards to practice a profession sounds like a good way to protect consumers from frauds, but Milton and Rose Friedman argue that one trade-off is that labor unions and professional organizations recommend strict licensure requirements which limit the number of practitioners. The Friedmans write that “Licensure is widely used to restrict entry…There is no occupation so remote that an attempt has not been made to restrict its practice by licensure” (p. 239). Making it more difficult to get licensed results in higher wages for professionals and more expensive services for consumers. Walter E. Williams notes that even people who want to be barbers or cosmeticians need schooling and need to pass exams for licensure. He states that “All of these requirements raise the cost of entry, which naturally leads to a smaller number of practitioners…” (p. 60). The higher cost of entry and services discriminates against customers and potential practitioners with low incomes. Licensed professionals would benefit greatly from laws that restrict the ability of AI to provide comparable services at a low cost.
References
Milton Friedman & Rose Friedman (1990). Free to Choose: A Personal Statement. Harcourt, Inc. [originally published in 1979].
Walter E. Williams (2011). Race & Economics: How Much can be Blamed on Discrimination? Hoover Institution Press.
Population Control Brutality in India
Doomsday predictions and authoritarian governments have been a deadly combination across the world. In the 1960s and 1970s, thanks to the work of scientists like Paul Ehrlich, governments around the world were convinced that an increasing human population would lead to mass starvation. They attempted to reduce the size of the human population by promoting so-called family planning programs. This push for population control by extremists in the US government, United Nations, and World Bank, incentivized coercive sterilization campaigns in poor nations like China and India. Chelsea Follett describes how in 1974, Henry Kissinger wrote a National Security Council Memorandum encouraging the US government to reduce the average number of children per family to just two children, and that poor nations like India should be specifically targeted, “…through aid and through UN agencies, [to] ‘assist’ with the goal of ‘population moderation.’ The memorandum urges ‘explicit consideration’ of ‘mandatory programs’” (p. 12).
Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley write about mass sterilization campaigns that took place in India between 1975 and 1977, under the reign of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The Prime Minister’s son, Sanjay Gandhi, was put in charge of the program and went all in. The Indian government enforced this campaign using a variety of coercive measures. For the unsterilized, hospitals refused to provide treatment, wages and property were stolen, access to water was denied, school faculty members and students were threatened financially and academically, housing was denied, businesses were given licenses contingent on their participating in the sterilization campaign, and the police rounded up random people in public for sterilization.
Follett estimates that the Indian government sterilized around 11 million people, and Tupy and Pooley write that “The majority of Sanjay Gandhi’s 11 million victims were vasectomized men. An additional 1 million women were fitted with IUDs…” and around 2000 people died from the procedures (p. 69).
The human population today is greater than at any point in history and yet we have fewer famines and more food than in centuries past. This is because human beings aren’t a plague of locusts that simply consume resources, but they are problem solvers and creators that discover new ways produce more abundance with fewer resources.
— Colin Braman
References
Chelsea Follett (2020). Neo-Malthusianism and Coercive Population Control in China and India: Overpopulation Concerns Often Result in Coercion. Cato Institute, Policy Analysis No. 897. Retrieved from: Neo-Malthusianism and Coercive Population Control in China and India: Overpopulation Concerns Often Result in Coercion | Cato Institute
Marian Tupy & Gale Pooley (2023). Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet. Cato Institute.
Warfare and the Economy
I remember during the Iraq war hearing people say that wars are usually good for boosting the US economy. Henry Hazlitt argues that this idea is nonsense and is just another version of the broken window fallacy. The French economist Frédéric Bastiat wrote a parable in 1850 about a shopkeeper’s broken window to encourage readers to consider the unintended consequences of economic and political decisions. Suppose a shopkeeper has a son who breaks one of his windows. The shopkeeper must now hire a glazier to replace his window. Some may say the act of breaking the window was a good thing because it gave money to the glazier who then uses that money to buy some other good or service, which encourages industrial activity. If this were true, then the best way to stimulate the economy would be to go around destroying and replacing all the windows in the city. Most people would agree this sounds like a ridiculous policy. The glazier has more business, but the shopkeeper has less money to patronize other businesses. Bastiat writes: “It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library… [p. 3]. The same can be said about any specific industries that thrive during or after wartime. Hazlitt writes that the reconstruction effort in Europe after WWII may have been beneficial for construction businesses, “But when they built more houses they had just that much less manpower and productive capacity left over for everything else” [p. 27]. Similarly, the European people had that much less money to spend on other consumer goods.
References
Frédéric Bastiat (2011). The Bastiat Collection (2nd ed.). Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Henry Hazlitt (1979). Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics. Three Rivers Press.