Books in Brief

Must History Repeat Itself? by Antony Fisher (Churchill Press, 155 pp., $6). Prosperity comes from maximizing individual choice by using that irreplaceable communications device known as the price system. The lesson is well supported with many fascinating and unfamiliar historical anecdotes. Chapters on the British experience are particularly important, since the United States appears to be following a similar road to stagnation. Keynesian policies and inflexible craft unions, for example, are much more dominant in Britain and the U.S. than in, say, West Germany. Fisher provides some solid evidence that the British welfare state takes more from the poor than it gives back. There is also a detailed and entirely reasonable ten-year plan for cutting public expenditures in half by simply returning many functions to the realm of private choice. Few books convey the message this well without becoming too technical. Alan Reynolds

The Changing Face of Hong Kong, New Departures in Public Policy, by Alvin Rabushka (A merican Enterprise Institute and Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 79 pp., $3). How did a barren rock become a dynamic economy? “Laissez-faire,” says Rabushka, who is an associate professor of political science at the University of Rochester. Hong Kong’s prosperity is apparent in the high wages it pays its workers. (Throughout Asia, only Japan pays more.) And not only is Hong Kong prosperous, it is also relatively peaceful, free from affronts to law and order. Hong Kong has succeeded despite an almost total lack of natural resources and despite the fact that only one-seventh of the land is arable. The main key to its success has been free trade. Other keys have been: weak trade unions, lack of minimum-wage laws, low taxation, very small public debt, balanced government budgets, and lack of foreign-currency exchange controls. There is not even a central bank. However, all good things must come to an end: Rabushka detects a shift away from laissez-faire since 1970. For example, child-labor laws have been passed and welfare programs have been started. Rabushka warns: if laissez-faire goes, with it may well go prosperity.

About the Author

Alan Reynolds

Alan Reynolds, National Review’s economics editor from 1972 to 1976, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of Income and Wealth.

MP

About the Author

Mark Peterson

About the Author

Linda Bridges

Ms. Bridges is the former editor-at-large of National Review.

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Must History Repeat Itself? by Antony Fisher (Churchill Press, 155 pp., $6). Prosperity comes from maximizing individual choice by using that irreplaceable communications device known as the price system. The lesson is well supported with many fascinating and unfamiliar historical anecdotes. Chapters on the British experience are particularly important, since the United States appears to be following a similar road to stagnation. Keynesian policies and inflexible craft unions, for example, are much more dominant in Britain and the U.S. than in, say, West Germany. Fisher provides some solid evidence that the British welfare state takes more from the poor than it gives back. There is also a detailed and entirely reasonable ten-year plan for cutting public expenditures in half by simply returning many functions to the realm of private choice. Few books convey the message this well without becoming too technical. Alan Reynolds

The Changing Face of Hong Kong, New Departures in Public Policy, by Alvin Rabushka (A merican Enterprise Institute and Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 79 pp., $3). How did a barren rock become a dynamic economy? “Laissez-faire,” says Rabushka, who is an associate professor of political science at the University of Rochester. Hong Kong’s prosperity is apparent in the high wages it pays its workers. (Throughout Asia, only Japan pays more.) And not only is Hong Kong prosperous, it is also relatively peaceful, free from affronts to law and order. Hong Kong has succeeded despite an almost total lack of natural resources and despite the fact that only one-seventh of the land is arable. The main key to its success has been free trade. Other keys have been: weak trade unions, lack of minimum-wage laws, low taxation, very small public debt, balanced government budgets, and lack of foreign-currency exchange controls. There is not even a central bank. However, all good things must come to an end: Rabushka detects a shift away from laissez-faire since 1970. For example, child-labor laws have been passed and welfare programs have been started. Rabushka warns: if laissez-faire goes, with it may well go prosperity.