
 |
|
May 13, 2013
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
April 22, 2013
US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer
April 19, 2013
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama's visit to Israel had no impact on public opinion or government policy
Morgan Housel: Gold collapse: The start of something big?
Pete Spotts: Livable super-Earths? Two candidates among Kepler's latest finds
April 17, 2013
Shira Rubin: Too much of a good thing? 'Palestinians' realize downside of foreign aid boom
Morgan Housel: BAD NEWS: EVERYONE IS RIGHT!
April 15, 2013
Kristen Chick: Egyptian Christians respond with harsh words to attack -- rocks, Molotov cocktails, and gunfire -- against main cathedral
Marcy Darnovsky and Karuna Jaggar: High Court to decide if you should own your DNA
Howard LaFranchi: US bracing for more Russian blowback after taking action against 18 more human rights violators
April 12, 2013
Mark Clayton: New cybersecurity bill: Privacy threat or crucial band-aid?
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jackie Robinson's Friend, Hank Greenberg; CNN's Jake Tapper; Texas County in the News is named for 19thC. Jewish soldier and Congressman
The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: FRUITY QUINOA STUFFED PEPPERS: A flavorful, colorful and edible vessel of delicately fluffy, mildly nutty filling combined with chewy apricots, tangy cherries, and crunchy pistachios
April 10, 2013
Peter Grier: North Korean missiles: Could US shoot them down?
Morgan Housel: Warning: Don't waste your capital being fooled by profit prophets
Donald Hensrud, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: Take vitamin supplements with caution --- even approved, they may actually do damage
Eryn Brown: 74 DNA discoveries move cure closer for three cancers
April 8, 2013
Jonathan Tobin: What Part of No Preconditions Do American Jews Not Get?
Fred Weir: Is Putin finally trading his own party for a new power base?
|
| |
Jewish World Review
June 20, 2007
/ 4 Sivan, 5767
Bill Gates Needs an Econ Course
By
John Stossel
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Dropping out of college didn't stop Bill Gates from making tons of money, but it kept him from classes where he might have learned about the beauty of spontaneous market processes.
Never mind. I forgot that he attended Harvard. He might not have learned about markets after all.
Gates spoke at Harvard recently, urging graduating students to take on the "world's deepest inequities [including] world hunger ... the scarcity of clean water ... children who die from diseases we can cure" [http://tinyurl.com/23745t]. All of us want those problems solved, and through their charitable foundation [http://www.gatesfoundation.org/default.htm], Gates and his wife, Melinda, have certainly put their money where their mouths are. But Gates seems unaware that these problems can't be eliminated in the simplistic way he advocates.
He told the grads, "The market did not reward saving the lives of these children [in poor countries], and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system."
What is Gates talking about?
Can he name one poor country that permits the free market to operate? The problem is not that the market doesn't make it profitable to save lives it most certainly does. The problem is that Third World countries have overbearing, corrupt governments that are obstacles to private property and freedom. That's why the children's parents have no voice or power.
Poor people in the West and in East Asia lifted themselves out of poverty by relying largely on the unplanned market process. That process countless individuals pursuing their own interests by trading with one another is, as Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek put it, a "discovery procedure." Through the price system and free competition, it clarifies tradeoffs of scarce resources, generates the lowest-cost solutions, and provides feedback about success and failure through profit and loss.
This spontaneous order is far better at "saving the lives of these children."
Maybe the Gates Foundation's private charity will work wonders, but more government-to-government subsidies won't do the trick. The trillions spent in foreign aid have little to show for it. As William Easterly writes in "The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good," "Economic development happens, not through aid, but through the homegrown efforts of entrepreneurs and social and political reformers. While the West was agonizing over a few tens of billion dollars in aid, the citizens of India and China raised their own incomes by $715 billion by their own efforts in free markets" [http://tinyurl.com/2jgo9c].
At Harvard, Gates said, "We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities."
He misses the point. Gates faults the free market for problems caused by governments. What constricts the reach of the free market is the state. Gates seems oblivious to all the ways that governments here and abroad cripple enterprise. In poor countries, corrupt bureaucracies smother entrepreneurship while enriching cronies. The lack of formal property rights and stable law keeps average people from accumulating capital. So the poor stay poor. That's what causes "scarcity of clean water" and kills "children who die from diseases we can cure."
Gates said, "We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes."
He should know that for spending to better reflect people's values, governments must butt out. Politicians are notoriously bad at improving the lot of their populations. What they are good at is confiscating money and spending it the way they want it spent. It's only when governments do less , and tax people less, that people are free to earn and keep their own money. Only then does their money really "reflect their values."
You want poor countries to get rich, Bill Gates? Work for free-market reform.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JUST OUT FROM STOSSEL
Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel --- Why Everything You Know Is Wrong
Stossel mines his 20/20 segments for often engaging challenges to conventional wisdom, presenting a series of "myths" and then deploying an investigative journalism shovel to unearth "truth." This results in snappy debunkings of alarmism, witch-hunts, satanic ritual abuse prosecutions and marketing hokum like the irradiated-foods panic, homeopathic medicine and the notion that bottled water beats tap. Stossel's libertarian convictions make him particularly fond of exposes of government waste and regulatory fiascoes. Sales help fund JWR.
|
JWR contributor John Stossel is co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20." To comment, please click here.
Archives
© 2007, by JFS Productions, Inc.
Distributed by Creators Syndicate, Inc.
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|