Tweet [1]
Socialism subordinates the interests of individuals in the name of a utopian egalitarianism, producing terrible results wherever tried. And yet it manages to seduce people because it purports to advance a just society. But America First dispenses with notions like justice. It has a zero-sum Hobbesian view of the world where one group’s benefit is the other’s loss. Socialists want to unite the world behind a problematic conception of the common good. But America First divides the world into us versus them, insiders versus outsiders — and then uses the full power of the state to advance the interests of the former without much regard for fairness toward the latter. It’s a fundamentally tribal approach to politics where (state) might makes right.
Art Carden remembers Gary Becker [3]. A slice:
In my opinion, one of the more interesting empirical analyses of this phenomenon is a 1989 article by Donald Cox and John Nye in the Journal of Economic History [4]. In a study of 19th-century French manufacturing — when gender attitudes were far less progressive than they are in modern times and when, therefore, people had less of an incentive to misreport the data — Cox and Nye found that men and women were paid according to their productivity rather than according to their gender. Is market competition a panacea that will eliminate all discrimination? That’s doubtful; however, Becker helped us understand how a competitive marketplace can punish discriminators.
Matt Ridley exposes the inhumanity of Greenpeace [5].
Richard Rahn celebrates the increase in consumption equality [6].
And Arthur Brooks celebrates the improving state of humanity [7].