Dead Wrong™ with Johan Norberg - GMOs (VIDEO)

Genetically modified organisms are Frankenfoods. This is a wild dangerous experiment that must be stopped, at once. At least we need labeling laws to warn people. Dead Wrong! In this short video clip, Free To Choose Media Executive Editor and Cato Institute Senior Fellow Johan Norberg explains.

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Dead Wrong™ with Johan Norberg - Terrorism (VIDEO)

The terrorists strike again, and no one is safe. They don’t just threaten our lives, they threaten our societies. It’s time that we strike back, with all possible means, without restraint. Dead Wrong! In this short video clip, Free To Choose Media Executive Editor and Cato Institute Senior Fellow Johan Norberg explains.

To watch more Dead Wrong™ videos, click here.

TV Worth Watching: The Real Adam Smith

We just released our latest Free To Choose Media broadcast 

It’s difficult to imagine that a man who lived with horse-drawn carriages and sailing ships would foresee our massive 21st century global market exchange, much less the relationship between markets and morality. But Adam Smith was no ordinary 18th century figure. Considered the “father of modern economics,” Smith was first and foremost a moral philosopher. The revolutionary ideas he penned in The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, changed the world.

Swedish author, commentator and Cato Senior Fellow Johan Norberg explores Adam Smith's life, his ideas about morality and economics, and how the concepts he discussed in his books and lectures are still relevant today.

Morality & Markets:
Part One, Morality & Markets, explores Smith’s life and role in the Scottish Enlightenment, his thoughts on empathy and how we distinguish right from wrong. French wine, Scottish whiskey, and freshly-baked scones all illustrate Smith’s economic principles. True wealth is defined. We discover Smith’s thoughts on the government’s role in markets, his distaste for monopolies/crony capitalism in the form of the East India Company, and his thoughts on the American colonies.

Ideas That Changed the World:
Part Two, Ideas That Changed the World, explores contemporary life and Smith’s influences on the very things we see going on today. Why is Smith widely studied now in China? Ethical businesses, like Whole Foods, showcase the morality Smith insisted was critical to thriving markets. Uber, eBay and even a tiny guitar store demonstrate that markets can thrive through the organization and “self-policing” of the participants themselves.

Where To Watch:
You can stream both parts directly from our Free To Choose.TV website.

You can stream both parts directly from our YouTube channel.

You can stream both parts directly from our Vimeo channel.

You can Sign Up for broadcast airing notifications for public television.

Want to learn more about this program, Adam Smith, his books and ideas? Click here to discover who The Real Adam Smith is under our explore website.

You can also purchase the DVD set on SALE here. Broadcast Special Price: $15.95!!

Dead Wrong with Johan Norberg - Socialist Sweden (Video)

Many people claim the U.S. should be more like Sweden and give more benefits. Should we? In this short video clip, Free To Choose Media Executive Editor and Cato Institute Senior Fellow Johan Norberg explains how Sweden became successful first, and how expanded government actually pulled them down.

To see more Dead Wrong videos with Johan, click here.

From the Founder: Seeing is Believing from Bob Chitester

Seeing is believing. 

Scenes of polar bears on melting ice floes. Beggars on the street--a church’s soup kitchen closed because of government regulations. An interior designer is put out of business for lack of a state-issued license. She has few options left to her. 

For most people these slice-of-life vignettes are more persuasive than mounds of data. Image and story are more likely to change beliefs and prompt individuals to act. 

And when you get down to it, it’s the individual who acts: Why do we think as we do? Why do we do what we do? 

Notice I did not ask about our education, our genetic makeup, our social environment, our ethnic or religious affiliations, our psychological makeup, or our philosophical starting points. Doing so may advance scholarship, but asking these questions will not directly engage the millions of citizens whose votes shape our collective destiny, for better or worse. 

That is not to say only a few of us are smart enough to understand why limiting government is desirable. It’s just too few citizens think it’s worth the effort. 

Give people the freedom--to make their own decisions, to decide what makes them happy and to take action toward that goal and they don’t much care whether Caesar Augustus or Cicero and the Senate rule the land. But whoever rules, there will be only a smidgen of difference in outcome unless a majority of citizens keep the autocrat or the legislature in check by somehow limiting the size and scope of government as necessary for human freedom to prevail. 

Why we do what we do - is to improve our well-being and achieve the satisfaction of taking care of ourselves. We want to be happy. Charles Murray and Arthur Brooks have been prominent among those testing the thesis of what Arthur describes as "earned success." Both are contributing to one our upcoming video projects, Work and Happiness: The Human Cost of Welfare, which parallels a soon-to-be released book by Phil Harvey and Lisa Conyers. A public TV program and teaching units will be available in the Spring of 2016.

Our instincts and observations of others lead to the conclusion people would rather work for a living, but if things go bad, the majority expect Augustus or Cicero and the Senate to bail them out. And once bailed out, they want the government to get out of the way so they can give it another try own their own. And we should all accept the sincerity of that notion.

Cicero and the Senate and Augustus were practitioners of public choice theory, give the folks what they want and we can continue to enjoy the trappings of power. But failure to support Senators who resisted the centralization of power led to Augustus' empire and centuries of worsening imperial repression of personal and economic freedom.

Sound familiar? The burden is on those of us who do think it is worth the effort, to understand the acceptable limits of government and to communicate the winning ideas of freedom in the manner the average person can easily grasp and remember when making a decision regarding the extend of Caesar's role in their lives.

Economics at the Center of Arab Spring Ground Zero by Roger Brown

In early 2011, the Arab Spring quickly ignited in Tunisia, and within weeks its fires had spread to almost every nation in the Arab World. As massive demonstrations and conflicts ignited in city after city, Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto realized that he was witnessing what was perhaps the most important event of his lifetime. One question dominated his thoughts: Exactly why would the suicide-by-fire of Mohamed Bouazizi, and insignificant fruit peddler in a dusty backwater Tunisian town, resonate so strongly that the reaction would topple four governments?

He immediately sent a research team to Tunisia and other North African countries to find out. Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) researchers worked in the streets and souks of North Africa for months. To their great surprise, they learned that there had been dozens of similar suicides by small entrepreneurs and businessmen across the region.

ILD teams interviewed as many families and survivors as they could, and the stories they heard were all eerily similar. Few of the suicides were ever motivated by politics. All were hard workers who were not permitted to work legally. All had been abused, humiliated, ejected, and robbed of their means to make a living. All simply wanted to be left in peace, to be free of petty harassment and corruption.

As the data poured in ILD research teams in North Africa, we at FTCN realized that we had the story of a lifetime. We had access to Bouazizi's family and friends and were receiving report after report of landmark ILD statistics.

Together, they demonstrated unequivocally that the Arab Spring was far more about economic inclusion than religion or politics. The data also mirrored what the ILD had documented in over 30 other developing world communities worldwide: property rights and inclusive efficient business law are far more important factors in development than suspected.

Our production crew joined de Soto and his researchers, going to ground zero of the Arab Spring: Bouazizi's family, friends, and community. Together with them, they documented Bouazizi's last day. They also filmed other small businessmen who are hopelessly trapped outside the system. 

Bouazizi's death resonated so strongly because his experience of corruption, exclusions, daily humiliation, bribery, and bureaucratic labyrinths, specifically designed to be impenetrable to those without connections, are identical to those which over 100 million people across the Arab world would experience on a daily basis. Our documentary introduces a new perspective and critical new ideas essential to the international discussion surrounding these events.

We were exploring new ground here, and, of course, we wondered how much of our finding reflected Islam or Arabic culture. These two elements are part of the picture, to be sure, but de Soto emphasizes that this is a revolution in Arabic society, not an Arabic revolution. He sees this process as one every society must go through.

The end results is the first Free To Choose Network project to be distributed, in Arabic, across the Arab world. The program is being broadcast repeatedly via Alhurra, the network set up by the United States shortly after the Iraq War. It is being used by the ILD in meeting with community groups, and is also being screened in universities across the Middle East and North Africa.

The Arab world is realizing the incredible importance of "invisible things" - property rights, efficient business law, and truly free markets open to all. We often take these for granted, like stoplights, paved streets, or electricity. But with each project I have done with de Soto, I have witnessed how the "invisible things" make all the difference in the world between poverty and prosperity.

To stream The Unlikely Heroes of the Arab Spring, click here.

Roger Brown has been the writer and producer of three FTCN documentaries with Hernando de Soto.

*This on location report was recirculated from the 2014 Spring Winning Idea News.

From the Founder: Between the Ideal and the Possible

The ultimate goal of our efforts can be started simply: reduce the role of government in order to increase individual freedom. The tough part is agreeing on the specifics. What's the size and scope of government that's desirable? By what means do we get there? What is the right balance between accepting the need for incremental change and advocating for core principles?

First we must establish a vision of limited government, but we have to do so recognizing the electorate will ultimately decide to what extent they'll accept that vision.

Therefore we must devise messages that are convincing to the majority of citizens and find distribution channels that reach millions. The millions on which we focus are students who are still forming their vision of a just world. 

The second challenge relates to the first. People are naturally "conservative" in their behavior; once they've formed an opinion they are resistant to change. Bring them a radically new insight and they are likely to refuse to give it any consideration. But with young people, this isn't always the case.

Consider two aspects of Milton Friedman's thought: his definition of the limited role of government and his advocacy of school choice. He thought government had only three functions: 

"The basic functions can be listed very simply. They are, first of all, to prevent one man from coercing another- the internal police function. They are, second, providing for external defense. These two are really part of the same: to prevent coercion- to prevent coercion from within, to prevent coercion from without, and beyond this to promote voluntary cooperation among people by defining the terms under which we are going to cooperate together and by adjudicating disputes." 

Providing education was not included, yet Friedman did not join Marshall Fritz's effort to abolish compulsory state-funded education. He agreed with Marshall in principle and applauded him for outlining the arguments in favor of taking education out of the hands of government, but he thought to push for immediate repeal of tax-supported education was a push too far.

Instead Friedman conceived the concept of school choice, leaving compulsory education in place. He felt that it was unrealistic to expect to counter 150 years of entrenched government control of education in one stroke. So he devised an approach that would lead to competition between private and government schools, resulting in improved outcomes- thus setting the stage for future repeal of tax based school funding.

We grapple with this kind of decision every day. Whether developing material for our prime audience of 6 -26 year olds or public TV viewers, we must decide how far we can take them on the path to awareness of the power of free markets, the effectiveness of market-based solutions to public policy problems, and the increased well-being from reducing government's role in our lives.

I am saddened when I hear someone accuse Friedman of being a statist because he put forth ideas for incremental change. We need to constrain our tendency to demonize those who opt for less than complete and immediate realization of ideal. We need both; those who set forth a vision of the ideal society and those who can formulate the steps that can get us closer to it.

India Awakes: A Report from the Field

On Location India Awakes: Report from the Field by James and Maureen Tusty

One of the three stories featured in India Awakes involves property rights. After India gained independence in 1947, the Forest Department took control of millions of acres of forestlands across the country. The local tribal people were seen as a hindrance and they were told they had no right to farm, hunt or forage. The government left them landless and impoverished, resulting in near-starvation living conditions for decades. 

A recent property rights law has allowed tribal people to obtain deeds to their land, and in this new program we show how GPS technology and Google Maps were instrumental in their property rights victory. Such a high-tech solution may not seem extraordinary at first, until one realizes that Sagai village (where we filmed) has no electricity or plumbing. One of our crew members had to drive 90 minutes each night to the nearest electrical outlet to charge our camera batteries. In a world without electricity, using a GPS unit to solve a problem was bold and unexpected. No electricity also means no television. The villagers invited us to film their story not fully understanding what a television documentary was.

One goal in our filming was to recreate how the villagers mapped their land with the GPS units. So we recruited three or four villagers to demonstrate what they did for our camera. However, our volunteers did not quite know what to expect since they knew little or nothing about television. The GPS mapping process involved holding down a button on  specially programmed GPS unit, then walking the perimeter of the land plot.

We asked one of our villager actors to plot his neighbor's land since it was more accessible and photogenic than his own land. He agreed and started walking the perimeter of the plot. After he had walked around 50 feet, we asked him to start over to get a second angle of the same scene. However, he spoke only his local language, so our English had to be translated first into
Hindi and then to his dialect. Besides wondering why we were stopping him from mapping the very land we had just asked him to map, the language barrier between us made communicating quite confusing.




To find out more about this new program, being released in the fall of 2015, visit our program website.

Michigan Government to take over Detroit?

            In the wake of the emergency that is the city of Detroit, Bloomberg reports that Governor Rick Synder declares a state takeover in the works.


If more government intervention in Detroit is the answer, should we not first consider to what extent government intervention led to the follies of Detroit?  The centralization of power has a poor track record; will Detroit continue to be yet another example?