No Morals No Freedom, Know Morals ...

Two apparently unrelated bits of news:

Global despotism is on the rise and freedom take a beating around the world.

Free market ideals are taking a real beating as they are replaced by centrally planned, statist economies.

Actually, they are related. The champions of freedom have lost their moral authority. Yes, we had successes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, The Philippines and other more obscure places, and no, free market capitalism did not cause the economic debacle we now face.

But the Western press, resentful of the system that put them in their place of prosperity, want to bring it all down, man! "That'll teach those Bu$hies to try to free all those people!" They will never forgive Ronald Reagan for building the economic juggernaut that drove the decades-long global prosperity boom that enabled literally millions world-wide to pull themselves out of poverty. This model is still the envy and blueprint for successful economies worldwide.

Claudia Rosett writes in Forbes:

The basic cause for concern is not that there are more dictatorships than a few years ago, but that the global ethos has shifted. There is a growing swagger among despots.

since the wave of democratization that swept parts of Asia in the late 1980s and rolled on in 1991 to the Soviet collapse, despots have had a chance to rethink, regroup, and--like the opportunistic crowd they are--adapt. Where there is an opening, whenever the pressures come off, they tend to find and exploit it.

Freedom House notes the "continuation of a negative global trend with respect to freedom of expression, freedom of association and the rule of law." In Europe and the U.K., politically correct fear of giving offense has put a damper on free speech and honest discourse. This reaches even into the U.S., where open debate has come under attack by way of both the same political correctness...

Steven Malanga brings it all home the simple question: "Can free markets survive in a secularized world?" Weber's Protestant Work Ethic got us here, but we've abandoned it:

The gradual disappearance of the Protestant ethic has shifted the emphasis in our economy from work and production to work and consumption—but most of all to consumption. A culture of thrift has become a culture of debt, and in the process many people have blurred the line between the legitimate competitive activity that is so essential to capitalism and criminality.

Professor Gavin Kennedy of Edinburgh reminds us that Adam Smith first wrote on morals before penning his famous work, The Wealth of Nations.

That the discourse of public life is dominated by ideological assaults on the idea of freer markets, and the supposed blessings of ‘regulation’ by bureaucracies, instead of by the justice system, is a symptom of the misjudged tendency to blame markets, which are not free, for the failings from political interventions that are not capable.

Throwing good money after bad is a weakness of poor management; ever tighter regulation to cover the deficiencies of regulations that don’t work as intended is congenital to micro-regulators.

In business markets, incompetence is terminated by losses; in political regulation, incompetence is cushioned by the public purse.

The Founding Fathers knew it. Adam Smith Knew it: A free market or a free society without morals is like a structure without a foundation.

Can you feel the sand shifting beneath your feet?

http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/28/qaddafi-korea-dictators-opinions-columnists_0129_claudia_rosett.html?feed=rss_opinions

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/01/can_free_markets_survive_in_a.html
http://www.adamsmithslostlegacy.com/2009/01/markets-and-morals.html