7/11/2007
Freedomnomics: a review
note: look for the footnotes in this review, i’m utilizing my nifty little footnotes plugin here. You can see a tiny superscript numeral and if you click on it, it will take you down to the footnote. Then, you can click on *back* and it will take you back to where you were reading in the text.
Also read Bernard Chapin’s interview with Dr. Lott at Frontpage Magazine, here.1
John R. Lott, Jr., Ph.D., wrote this incredible book, Freedomnomics, as a counterpoint to the leftist book railing against capitalism, entitled “Freakonomics”. In Freedomnomics, Dr. Lott sets the record straight on what capitalism is. He was kind enough to invite me to review the book. You can’t imagine how thrilled I was that he asked.
John R. Lott, Jr., Ph.D., is a renowned economist, following in the footsteps of noteworthy Milton Friedman, to whom he dedicates the short forward in the book. Dr. Lott has held positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford University, the University of California at Los Angeles, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Rice University, and was the chief economist in the United States Sentencing Commission during 1988-1989. He received his Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1984. During the 2007-08 academic year, Lott will be a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland.
He is the author of More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns. He has published more than ninety articles in academic journals, and his output is ranked twenty-sixth internationally and fourth worldwide, based on publications in American-edited academic journals. At the Social Science Research Network, his academic research papers are the fifth most downloaded among all academic economists, business professors and law professors over their careers. Opinion pieces by Lott have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the Chicago Tribune. (From the About the Author insert.)
Freedomnomics has been mentioned on the blogs of other economists such as Craig Newmark, Art DeVany, Lawrence White, and King Banian.
A note to Dr. Lott: Thanks, Doc, my husband and I are fans of yours, as is my father, it turns out.
Lott was effected, as many others were, by the media coverage about the claimed impact of guns on crime. He was surprised to find out, though, through his research, that gun control laws have a disastrous effect.2 And what was even more incredible is- he was honest enough to tell the world about it.3
My husband has used Dr. Lott’s research to combat liberals in debates about gun control, which is a hot button for both of us. So naturally, liberals aren’t too happy with Dr. Lott, but there are scores of us out there who are deeply appreciative of Lott’s work. His research on how affirmative action policies have negatively impacted police departments4 is another discovery I made recently, when I was doing my paper on Women in Combat.
Freedomnomics explains a lot of things in an easy-to-understand conversational way. He surprises the reader with fascinating information. I’d never stopped to think, for example, that there is a relationship between the increasing number of out-of-wedlock births and abortion and increasing crime statistics.5 Did you know that? Or that there is a relationship between single parent and cohabitating unmarrieds and children who are not engaged in school, children who cut school, children who don’t perform well in school, etc. The explanation, he points out, is that single parents and people living together don’t devote as much time to their children as married people do. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
He also sees a causal relationship between murder rates Roe Vs. Wade and capital punishment, and cites statistics to back up the assertions based on the murder rates in certain age groups. Fascinating. He blends art with science, drawing conclusions based on research statistics, and it all makes sense.
Research by Economists since the Mid-1990s on the Death Penalty
| Reduced Murder Rate | No Discernible Effect on Murder Rate | Increased Murder Rate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Referenced Publications | Erlich and Liu, Journal of Law and Economics, 1999. | Katz, Levitt, and Shustorovich, American Law and Economics Review, 2003. | None |
| Lott, More Guns, Less Crime. University of Chicatgo Press, 2000. | Berk, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 2005. | None | |
| Cloninger and Marchesini, Applied Economics, 2001. | Narayan and Smyth, Applied Economics, 2006. | None | |
| Dezhbakhsh, Rubin, and Shepherd, American Law and Economics Review, 2003. | None | None | |
| Mocan and Gittings, Journal of Law and Economics, 2003. | None | None | |
| Shepherd, Journal of Legal Studies, 2004. | None | None | |
| Zimmerman, Journal of Applied Economics, 2004. | None | None | |
| Liu, Eastern Economic Journal, forthcoming. | None | None |
Reference p. 136. He also includes a few non refereed publications, but I think you get the point.
This is cool stuff! In Freakonomics, Lott points out, Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner describe the ‘obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit” that pervades our everyday lives. They go on to categorize “experts such as doctors, funeral directors, and life insurance agents as unscrupulous sharks looking to cash in on their expertise by swindling their own clients.”6 This is a hateful inaccurate characterization that is debunked in Lott’s book with reasoned, good valid argument based on valid coherent supporting premises.
Why are leftists railing against the evil corporations and oil companies, complaining about the immense ‘profits’ they make, catagorizing them as evil and greedy materialists? To promote the ‘everything free’ big government agenda. As Lott points out on so many issues, government restrictions and controls do not give us success.
The Free Market Works. As far back as 1848, Karl Marx published a Communist Manifesto, advocating an alternative economic system that would replace the market with state planning. Communism was adopted in many countries, but somehow the outcome was always the same. Mass shortages. Allowing people the freedom to improve their own economic condition helps to make society wealthier overall. (Lott, 2007 pp. 1-2)
I’ve said capitalism is Godly7 because free markets create incentive for people to behave honestly.(Lott, 2007)8 It only makes sense; good customer service, and dealing with people honestly which builds a good reputation, is the only way you’ll keep your business running and thriving. Lott’s thorough investigation utilizes economic studies spanning his entire career to illustrate his points.
Government interference, he points out, hinders free competition.
From campaign finance laws to rules for gaining a professional license, government regulation tends to hinder free competition. For example, because government-run firms frequently are more interested in market share than profits, they are more likely than private firms to engage in predatory pricing.9
DiLorenzo agrees. Predatory pricing, according to Thomas J. DiLorenzo at the Cato institute (1992), is a myth in the free marketplace.10 It is prevalent, however, where artificial government controls are introduced in order to ‘make things fair’.11
Long have I held to the contention here at CB that limited government affords us more freedom. Our founding fathers understood this well:
I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.
- Thomas Jefferson
The founders clearly understood this when they set up our wonderful system.
If you want to understand why socialism is a failed ideology, Lott’s book will help you. This should be of particular interest to everyone because of the presidential candidates that are running and their big government agendas for the upcoming 2008 election year.
Historically, communism failed as an economic system, demonstrated by mass shortages and such high level dysfunctioning that the populations oft times would rise up themselves to change it. Free market principles, on the other hand, produce the greatest successes, and Lott clearly demonstrates that in his book.
Another discovery I made when reading this book is why people who travel in academic circles are big government proponents. He explains why: Because their funding comes from government! That makes sense, we see this phenomenon also in the scientific community with global warming, which renders climate science more of a magic trick than science. Another reason academics have problems with their theories, he says, is that they’re isolated from testing them in the real world. And so economists while serving and studying in academia should be careful of a tendency to become ‘central planners’ and lose perspective about what economics really is in a free marketplace.
What really rang my bell about this book in the first few pages is Lott’s accounting his experience with an initiative to abolish property taxes in Bozeman, Montana. He explains how became spokesman for the intiative, almost by accident. He goes into how it didn’t go over well with the academics at the University of Montana’s economics department. My great-grandfather ran up against a similar situation here in Illinois in the 1900’s. He has the same type of courage my great-grandfather had, a rarety in today’s world.
Newspaper editorials began attacking my involvement as soon as my op-ed first appeared. By late August, I learned that the Commissioner of Political Practices had come close to filing felony charges against me for ostensibly violating a law forbidding state employees from engaging in political campaigns. I had no idea that such a law even existed, but fortunately for me, I wasn’t on a state salary at the time because I was scheduled to go on leave at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University the following academic year. Learning of this, the commissioner’s office dropped its investigation of me. Curiously, no one threatened to prosecute the host of state-salaried academics and other state employees who were energetically campaigning against the intiative.12
The inititiative that would have abolished the taxes was defeated, but they took consolation in that the measure to freeze property taxes was passed.
He takes a look at the natural laws of supply and demand, and illustrates it in layman’s terms, giving the example of gas prices and Hurriciane Katrina. This is elementary economics theory (in my opinion), but something everyone should remember when we see and hear these loud complaints about evil oil corporations and their profits.
…first,…when demand rises or supply decreases, prices will rise; and second, that price controls result in shortages.13
This is just a fascinating book.
His intriguing and unconventional conclusions are all worthy of notice, and serve as great ammunition for debates with liberals!
He takes on things like Campaign Finance Reform, under the heading of Crime and Punishment he looks at how capital punishment really works, and draws an amazing correlation between women’s suffrage and the growth of government. This really had an impact on me because during my research on the women in combat paper, I ran across a quote by Karl Marx:
“Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex,”
In the book, he illustrates the reason why women have a tendency toward supporting the growth of government and government programs: the government ends up taking the place of the ‘patriarchy’ the feminists are railling so hard against. Interestingly, when a woman is married, she tends to be a republican and hold to conservative values and principles. When she is single, she tends to vote democrat. With the advent of ‘no fault’ divorce, the size of government exploded. Very intriguing and thought provoking stuff.
Other issues like smoking bans, affirmative action in police departments and voting are covered. It is heavily referenced with tables and charts, and there is a comprehensive reference section at the back of the book for each chapter. Plus, it’s only 194 pages long (not including aknowledgments)! Fantastic. There is so much in those pages, I heartily recommend you pick it up! And get one for a liberal friend!~~
My thanks to Dr. Lott for inviting me to read the new book. What a pleasure!
- Chapin, B. (July 6, 2007). There’s No ‘Freak’ in Free Market, Frontpage Magazine at Frontpagemag.com.[back]
- Lott, J. (September 29, 2004) District of Inequality: Citizens go unarmed in D.C. while pols are free to protect themselves. National Review Online.[back]
- Lott, J. (February 4, 2005). Ballistic Fingerprinting’s a Dud Another failed gun-control strategy. National Review Online.[back]
- Lott, J. (March, 2005). Affirmative Action and Cops, LewRockwell.com[back]
- Lott, J (2007). Freedomnomics: why the free market works and other half-baked theories don’t. (pp. 122-125) Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc..[back]
- Lott, J (2007). Freedomnomics: why the free market works and other half-baked theories don’t.(pp 2.) Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc..[back]
- me (March 5, 2006). why Socialists don’t understand capitalism, Cao’s blog.[back]
- Lott, J (2007). Freedomnomics: why the free market works and other half-baked theories don’t. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc..[back]
- ibid, (p. 5.).[back]
- DiLorenzo, T. (1992) The Myth of Predatory Pricing. Cato Policy Analysis 169. Cato Institute.[back]
- Lott, J (2007). Freedomnomics: why the free market works and other half-baked theories don’t. (pp. 4-5) Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc..[back]
- Lott, J (2007). Freedomnomics: why the free market works and other half-baked theories don’t. (pp. 6-7.) Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc..[back]
- ibid, (p. 19).[back]
