Thanks
to economic freedom, you can buy Paul Frank merchandise in Slovakia. The
availability of monkey-face t-shirts might not sound like an epochal triumph,
but it has made a world of difference for the Rybárikovás and their standard of
living. Even more dramatic are the case
studies of the North Korean defector providing start-up capital to his fellow
refugees in the ROK and the Chilean beekeeper exporting queens to struggling
European bee farms. Drawing upon these
highly personal case-studies and the Fraser Institute’s annual report on world
economic freedom, host-economist Johan Norberg argues policies of economic
liberty makes the world a better place whenever they are adopted in Economic Freedom in Action: Changing Lives
(promo
here), which
airs on Chicago’s WTTW this Thursday.
Written
and directed by James & Maureen Castle Tusty, the filmmakers responsible
for inspiring Singing Revolution, and
produced in conjunction with the Free to Choose Network, Action follows the template established by Milton & Rose Friedman’s
groundbreaking series, sprinkling manageable nuggets of analysis amid plentiful
real world examples. Spanning the globe,
Action starts in Africa, examining
the country’s extraordinary turn-around from the perspective of Sylvia
Banda.
Under
Socialist president-for-life Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia was an economic basket case,
but following his ouster, it has become one of the continent’s fastest growing
economies, thanks to an ambitious privatization program. Banda was able to ride that wave. Starting
with an unfurnished one-room restaurant, she now operates the nation’s largest
food supply companies. Through
capitalism, she has enacted a series agricultural and hygiene reforms that the
government and NGOs struggled to implement.
The
contrast between economic liberty and authoritarianism is starkly demarcated on
the Korean peninsula. While famine is an
everyday fact of life in the tightly regimented DPRK, the ROK is a land of
plenty, often leading to culture shock for defectors like Daesung Kim. To help his fellow refugees adapt, Kim
started a venture capital firm that invests in their small enterprises. Once struggling to survive, those he works
with now have a stake in South Korea’s economy and can provide entrepreneurial
expertise if and when the North finally liberalizes its markets and political
system.
Arguably,
Kim is the bravest capitalist featured in Action. In contrast, the stakes were never so high
for Katerina Rybáriková, but her story nicely illustrates the necessity of
economic liberty in addition to political liberty. After the fall of Communism, Slovakia still
lagged behind most of Eastern Europe and ranked relatively low on the Fraser
Institute’s index. However, a concerted
program of privatization and property rights guarantees created the climate
that allowed Rybáriková to successful pitch a Slovakian franchise to the Paul
Frank corporate office.
One
might expect Action to steer clear of
Chile, yet it completely proves the thesis of Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom, with political liberty duly following the
establishment of economic liberty. While
acknowledging the abuses of the Pinochet regime, Action charts the explosive growth following his economic reforms
that remain largely unadulterated to this day. Thanks to the market-based
economy, brothers John and Miguel Hernandez have been able to build their bee
farm into a going pollination service and bee queen exporting concern, a
business with particularly positive global ramifications, given environmental
concerns regarding dwindling bee populations.
Chile
and South Korean have consistently ranked high on the Fraser report, while
Zambia and Slovakia have been recent up-and-comers. That begs the obvious question: how does America
rank? For years, we usually held the
second or third spot, but we have fallen in recent years, to number nineteen.
Norberg and the Tustys do not engage in a look of finger-wagging, but the
significance of this tumble is hard to miss.
