You must be logged in.
You must be logged in.
In about 50 words – When did you realize the beauty of economic freedom?
For me it was an academic experience. Dr. Roger Garrison made it very clear how Keynesian economics was an imposed system, imposed upon a real and magnificent economic system. Then it was easy to see it everywhere, even though it languished under statism, and that it was all of our responsibilities to release it from its bondage.
I am no expert but I realize it more everyday. The more economic freedom the more prosperity. You can compare Canada and the USA to most African countries and everyone knows the poverty there-but there is also a lack of economic freedom. I can do the same within Canada, comparing my province of New Brunswick and other Atlantic Provinces(Nova Scotia, PEI, Newfoundland) to Alberta and Saskatchewan. The result is much less freedom, jobs and prosperity here with greater taxation whereas out West you have 2 of the most economically free jurisdictions in North America and until just recently they were the most prosperous too with near zero unemployed. Economic freedom= prosperity.
Statist propaganda tries to hide these facts from the people.
In hind sight I would say it was when I came to understand and appreciate the “win-win” concept. It was only much later in life that you might say I came to appreciate its deeper inner beauty of freedom. (40 words! YAY!) +3
Was basically a libertarian for a few months before I started getting into economics, beginning with Economics in One Lesson, that began a love affair with the subject in general. The I read wider. I was actually on holiday in Spain, looking at the rolling hills with villages with little white-walled houses and markets, when it clicked, and I suddenly saw the unarguable beauty of markets. It was a very spiritual moment.
This is where the statists accuse us of being market zealots. Oh well.
For me the Broken Window Fallacy was an awakening. Somewhere around that time I read Cliches of Politics and it probably led to a more rounded outlook.
(Less than $5 now)
When I was recruited in the Boston Consulting Group, 25 years ago. I started to see the world as a matrix, an individual helping others that help others that help the original individual. It wasn’t a Leontief matrix, it was a spontaneous matrix. Then I put my communist party card in a drawer, and never looked back.
