The Milton Friedman Prize Goes to a Hero:
The 2008 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty has been awarded to Yon Goicoechea. Goicoechea was a key leader of the Venezuelan student movement that ralled the country to vote down Hugo Chavez’s referendum on a constitutional change that would have turned Venezuela into a socialist dictatorship. More on Yon here, as well as information on the gala May 15 dinner in New York at which the Prize will be presented.
It’s interesting to reflect on the diversity of the first four recipients of the Prize. The first Prize in 2002 went to Peter Bauer, presumably in recognition of his lifelong scholarship on development economics and the sources of wealth. (I say “presumably” because the Selection Committee doesn’t formally explain its decisions. But the announcement of the award referred to “his pioneering work in the field of development economics, where he stood virtually alone for many years as a critic of state-led development policy with its emphasis on central planning and external foreign aid.”)
The second Prize went to Hernando de Soto, an author of two books on economics but more importantly a tireless crusader and activist on behalf of poor people and their need for property rights.
The third Prize, in 2006, went to Mart Laar, the youngest prime minister in the history of Estonia, who led his country out of the Soviet Union and into the European mainstream. He slashed taxes and transfer payments, privatized state agencies, liberalized international trade, and created one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, dubbed the “Baltic Tiger.”
And this year the Prize goes to a young man who is not–not yet, at least–a scholar, an author, or an elected official. He’s just a law student who stood up when others wouldn’t and helped to create a movement that prevented a strongman from becoming a dictator.
I think the diversity of the recipients reflects the many ways in which liberty must be defended and advanced. People can play a role in the struggle for freedom as scholars, writers, activists, organizers, elected officials, and many other ways. Some may be surprised that a Prize named for a great scholar, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, might go to a political official or a student activist. But Milton Friedman was not just a world-class scholar. He was also a world-class communicator and someone who worked for liberty in issues ranging from monetary policy to conscription to drug prohibition to school choice. When he discussed the creation of the Prize with Cato president Ed Crane, he said that he didn’t want it to go just to great scholars. The Prize is awarded every other year “to an individual who has made a significant contribution to advance human freedom.” Friedman specifically cited the man who stood in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square as someone who would qualify for the Prize by striking a blow for liberty. Yon Goicoechea not only stood in front of the tank, he stopped it. Milton Friedman would be proud.
I notice that the Prize has gone each time to someone almost a generation younger than the previous recipient. I’d guess that trend won’t continue, unless President Obama’s daughter convinces him to privatize Social Security.
Consider breakfast. My breakfast, to be exact. It’s been months since I have had an oatmeal breakfast or a nice cup of espresso with a drop of milk because coffee and milk has literally vanished from supermarkets’ shelves since last November. And that includes “Mercal”, the government’s supermarket network where the poor are supposed to buy food at subsidized low prices
Via Arnold Kling, Ibsen Martinez writes from Caracas that Chávez’ efforts to kill the Venezuela economy are working…
An economic crisis is rapidly playing out when it should be the best of times for Venezuela, a country endowed with the largest conventional oil reserves outside the Middle East and with oil prices verging on global record highs.
By late 2007—writes Francisco Rodríguez, who is Assistant Professor of Economics and Latin American Studies at Wesleyan University—Chávez’s economic model had begun to unravel. […] Scarcities in basic foodstuff, such as milk, black beans, sardines were chronic, and the difference between the official and the black-market exchange rate reached 215 percent. […] During the past five years, the Venezuelan government has pursued strongly expansionary fiscal and economic policies, increasing real spending by 137 percent and real liquidity by 218 percent. This splurge has outstripped even the expansion of oil revenues: the Chávez’s administration has managed the admirable feat of running a budget deficit in the midst of an oil boom.
The latter comment is from the recent Foreign Affairs article An Empty Revolution: The Unfulfilled Promises of Hugo Chávez:
Summary: Even critics of Hugo Chávez tend to concede that he has made helping the poor his top priority. But in fact, Chávez’s government has not done any more to fight poverty than past Venezuelan governments, and his much-heralded social programs have had little effect. A close look at the evidence reveals just how much Chávez’s “revolution” has hurt Venezuela’s economy — and that the poor are hurting most of all.
Chavez’ policies will work as well for Venezuela as Robert Mugabe’s policies worked for Zimbabwe. The Venezuelan people are falling further and further behind their global competitors. How much longer before the people eject this thug?
How long will it take for the Vietnamese people to get even with their contemporaries who had the advantage of economic freedom? Remember that Vietnam lost 50 years in the global competitiveness race — during which time the South Koreans went from poor to rich.
In 1981, Argentine inflation topped 130%, and by the early months of 1982 the situation was rapidly deteriorating. A web of price controls designed to compensate for monetary mischief at the central bank only made things worse. Confidence had collapsed and civil unrest was growing.
The military government’s decision to lay claim to Britain’s South Georgia Island on March 19, 1982, and later the Falklands, was dictator Leopoldo Galtieri’s last-ditch effort to boost the nation’s sense of strength, and to distract it from the reality that it was caught in an economic maelstrom.
Fast forward to 2008 and Venezuela, where the parallels cannot be ignored. The military government of President Hugo Chávez is engaging in provocations against a foreign power that would seem to have little purpose other than getting news of the crumbling economy off the front pages and ginning up nationalism.
In a speech before the national assembly last month, Mr. Chávez dropped a bombshell, proclaiming that Venezuela now recognizes the Colombian rebel group known as the FARC as a legitimate political actor. He went on to ask that European and South American governments remove the group from their terrorist lists. A day earlier his special envoy for FARC relations went public with his own fondness for the Colombian rebels, and with the news that the Venezuelan government stands ready to help them.
This was more than Mr. Chávez playing footsie with the FARC, which he has long been doing. This was a statement of official support for a band of outlaws who seek the destruction of the Colombian democracy. The news shook both nations. It suggested that Colombia is not only at war with the rebels, but also with a neighboring state.
…Hubris aside, Mr. Chávez had to know that his defense of the FARC was a long shot. But desperate times call for desperate measures. As the deterioration of the Venezuelan economy accelerates, Mr. Chávez is fast becoming a desperado with no better idea of how to get out of his jam than did Galtieri.
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