Fundación de Estudios Energéticos Latinoamericanos, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Subsurface Wealth: The Struggle for Privatization in Argentina (El Robo del Subsuelo) by Guillermo M. Yeatts
The Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hundson, NY, 1996 (English version)
Guillermo Yeatts provides a fascinating contrast of private versus public ownership in Subsurface Wealth, an analysis of the oil industry in Argentina. Despite the discovery of oil over 130 years ago, eighty percent of Argentina’s subsurface remains unexplored today, a consequence of state ownership of all subsurface rights. This situation, Yeatts argues, ‘continues to numb the same profit motive that spurred the investment, risk-taking and technological innovation responsible for the extraordinary growth of the petroleum industry in the U.S.’
Privatizing the subsurface mineral wealth of the country would allow for the aggressive exploration and development of these resources. The result, the book contends, would be a boost to the Argentine economy, providing a source of income for some of the country’s poorest regions and valuable jobs through the country.
The book received wide media attention in Argentina and throughout Latin America. Articles about the book also appeared in a number of papers in the United States including The Wall Street Journal.
Fundación de Estudios Energéticos Latinoamericanos promotes the privatization and deregulation of energy sources in Latin America as a way to improve conditions in poor regions with under-exploited natural wealth.
The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC
Curb Rights: A Foundation for Free Enterprise in Urban Transit by Daniel B. Klein, Adrian T. Moore and Binyam Reja
The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 1997
Some observers were surprised when Atlas bestowed a Fisher Award on The Brookings Institution is an institute that has long been associated with the left-leaning establishment in Washington, DC. Far from compromising its free-market principles, however, Atlas was recognizing a positive contribution by Brookings.
Curb Rights convincingly demonstrates how traditional ‘big government’ approaches to running local transit systems of government control, subsidies or regulation that have failed. Their proposal: establishing exclusive and transferable property rights in curb zones and transit stops that are leased by auction. Entrepreneurs would be free, able and driven to provide more innovative services, and market pressures would keep costs low.
Reviewers praised the innovative thinking, and clear articulation of the plan outlined in Curb Rights, calling it ‘provocative’ and ‘insightful.’ Dr. Gordon Tullock, then of the University of Arizona wrote, ‘this is the type of new thinking we need.’
The Manhattan Institute, New York, NY
The Excuse Factory: How Employment Law is Paralyzing the American Workplace by Walter K. Olson
The Free Press, New York, NY, 1997
Walter Olson offers a blistering critique of the laws and regulations that curtail freedom and stifle the economy in this award winning-publication.
Manhattan’s publication shows how employment laws in the United States make it nearly impossible to fire even the most incompetent and unmotivated workers and how the legal system coddles those who least deserve it. The Excuse Factory illustrates how this ‘enshrined mediocrity’ in the workplace imposes high costs on society in terms of lost jobs, lost wages, reduced safety, and rising aggravation. Olson presents one incredible story after another about drunken pilots, disgruntled postal employees, narcoleptic surgeons, and felonious job applicants who are virtually guaranteed jobs for life under current misguided policies. As Roger Clegg, general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, wrote in a 1997 review, ‘ The Excuse Factory’ tells chilling tales not only of judicial activism, but of legislative overreaching and executive-branch tyranny.
Olson offers a remarkably simple solution to the disincentives created by government intervention: give employers the freedom to work with whomever they chose. Liberty, he demonstrates, ‘turns out to be the best method to elicit the greatest willingness and enthusiasm to cooperate from those who might do us good.’
The Independent Institute, Oakland, CA
Taxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination , William F. Shughart II, ed.
Transaction Publisher, New Brunswick, NJ, 1997
The Independent Institute’s Taxing Choice reveals that, by taxing behavior deemed ‘politically incorrect’, politicians fund programs benefiting special interest groups at the expense of the greater public. Government policies toward various foods, drugs, tobacco and alcohol have been locked in a regulatory cycle of tax and taboo in which the government attempts to control personal choice through manipulation of the tax system. The book examines the nature and impact of such public policies, and reveals that the costs of selective taxes appear to fall disproportionately on lower-income people and tend to foster more government corruption than funding for public services.
As one reviewer wrote, ‘ Taxing Choice exposes the conventional rationale for discriminatory, regressive excise taxes as a faded remnant of the ideology of technocratic central planning, myopic log-rolling and pork-barrel politics.’
Released in October 1997, The Independent Institute book received widespread acclaim and extensive media coverage in American publications including The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and the Orange County Register. The book, which was designed for use in economics, political science, history and other college-level courses, has been adopted by courses at numerous universities nationwide.
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