Here’s a letter to the Washington Post:
Editor:
Michael Ignatieff is correct that a resurgence of liberalism would make America a better place (“I was born liberal. The ‘adults in the room’ still have a lot to learn.” Jan. 15). But that liberalism should be not the modern sort of John Rawls and E.J. Dionne, but the classical sort of F.A. Hayek and George Will. One deep problem with liberalism of the sort espoused by Mr. Ignatieff is revealed when he writes, as if it’s a fact too obvious to question, of “capitalism’s remorseless distribution of economic disadvantage.”
What in the world is he talking about?
Ordinary Americans, even ones in lower-income brackets, today live in air-conditioned homes, drive air-conditioned automobiles, carry electronic devices that stream music and videos and enable real-time conversations – in voice or in text – with people literally on the other side of the globe. Nearly all of us regularly fly through the air to distant locations, have closets full of clothes and amazing appliances and detergents to keep those clothes clean, spend lower and lower shares of our disposable incomes on food as the quality and variety of that food increase (fresh blueberries in January in New York would have astonished J.D. Rockefeller), enjoy health care undreamed of by J.P. Morgan, and have life expectancy at birth more than double what it was for most of humanity’s existence.
Indeed, our pets eat better than did most of our forebears, and even our inanimate stuff is more comfortably and securely accommodated than they were.
These and many other ordinary experiences of modern life are so routine that we take them for granted, yet each and every one would have astounded the richest monarch or pooh-bah before the capitalist era. And each one is the product of innovative, entrepreneurial capitalism. Capitalism is indeed remorseless, but in distributing economic advantage.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
