Economic freedom is a term used in economic and policy debates. As with freedom Free will is the purported ability of agents to make choices free from constraints. Historically, the constraint of dominant concern has been the metaphysical constraint of determinism. The opposing positions within that debate are metaphysical libertarianism, the claim that determinism is false and thus that free will exists; and hard determinism, generally, there are various definitions, but no universally accepted concept of economic freedom.[1][2] One major approach to economic freedom comes from the libertarian Libertarianism is advocacy for individual liberty with libertarians generally sharing a distinct regard for individual freedom of thought and action, as well as a strong opposition to coercive authority, such as that of government. However, there are also broad areas of disagreement among libertarians. Broad distinctions such as left- tradition emphasizing free markets A free market is a market without economic intervention and regulation by government except to enforce ownership and contracts. It is the opposite of a controlled market, where the government regulates how the means of production, goods, services and labor are used, priced, or distributed. This is the contemporary use of the term "free market& and private property Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other property. Private property can take the form of real estate, homes, factories, automobiles, capital, patents and copyrights. It is distinguished from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state,, while another extends the welfare economics Welfare economics is a branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to evaluate economic well-being, especially relative to competitive general equilibrium within an economy as to economic efficiency and the resulting income distribution. associated with it. It analyzes social welfare, however measured, in terms of economic activities of study of individual choice, with greater economic freedom coming from a "larger" (in some technical sense) set of possible choices.[3] Another more philosophical perspective emphasizes its context in distributive justice Distributive justice concerns what some consider to be socially just with respect to the allocation of goods in a society. Thus, a community in which incidental inequalities in outcome do not arise would be considered a society guided by the principles of distributive justice. Allocation of goods takes into thought the total amount of goods to be and basic freedoms of all individuals.[4]
Today, the term is most commonly associated with a free market A free market is a market without economic intervention and regulation by government except to enforce ownership and contracts. It is the opposite of a controlled market, where the government regulates how the means of production, goods, services and labor are used, priced, or distributed. This is the contemporary use of the term "free market& viewpoint, and defined as the freedom to produce, trade and consume any goods and services acquired without the use of force, fraud or theft. This is embodied in the rule of law, property rights and freedom of contract, and characterized by external and internal openness of the markets, the protection of property rights and freedom of economic initiative.[3][5][6]
Indices of economic freedom A number of indicators of economic freedom have been proposed. They differ in the methods by which they have been constructed, the purposes to which they have been put and the conception of economic freedom they embody attempt to measure (free market) economic freedom, and empirical studies based on these rankings have found them to be correlated with higher living standards, economic growth, income equality, less corruption and less political violence.[7][8][9][10][11]
Other conceptions of economic freedom include freedom from want The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 6, 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech , he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy:[1][12] and the freedom to engage in collective bargaining Collective bargaining is a process of voluntary negotiation between employers and workers' organizations aimed at reaching agreements which regulate working conditions. Collective agreements usually set out wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms and rights to participate in workplace or company.[13]
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Free market viewpoint
Magna Carta Magna Carta is an English charter, originally issued in the year 1215, and reissued later in the 13th century in modified versions which omit certain temporary provisions, including the most direct challenges to the monarch's authority. The charter first passed into law in 1225. The 1297 version, described as The Great Charter of the Liberties of marks one of the earliest attempts to limit a sovereign's authority and it is seen as a symbol of the rule of law.[14]Institutions of economic freedom
Rule of law
Free market advocates argue that the conservative principle of the rule of law While the rule of law has been described as "an exceedingly elusive notion" giving rise to a "rampant divergence of understandings", a dichotomy can be identified between two principal conceptions of the rule of law: a formalist or "thin" and a substantive or "thick" definition of the rule of law. Formalist both requires, and is required for economic freedom. Friedrich Hayek Friedrich August von Hayek CH , was an Austrian-born economist and philosopher known for his defence of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought. He is considered by some to be one of the most important economists and political philosophers of the twentieth century. Hayek's account of how changing argued that the certainty of law contributed to the prosperity of the West more than any other single factor. Other important principles of the rule of law are the generality and equality of the law Article 1: Freedom, Egalitarianism, Dignity and Brotherhood , which require that all legal rules apply equally to everybody. These principles can be seen as safeguards against severe restrictions on liberty, because they require that all laws equally apply to those with political and coercive power as well as those who are governed. Principles of the generality and equality of the law exclude special privileges and arbitrary application of law, that is laws favoring one group at the expense of other citizens.[15] According to Friedrich Hayek, equality before the law is incompatible with any activity of the government aiming to achieve the material equality Equality of outcome, equality of condition, or Equality of results is a form of social justice rhetoric which seeks to reduce or eliminate incidental inequalities in material condition between individuals or households in a society. This usually means equalizing income and/or total wealth to a certain degree by, for example, granting a greater of different people. He asserts that a state's attempt to place people in the same (or similar) material position leads to an unequal treatment of individuals and to a compulsory redistribution of income.[16] Both of those actions are contributing to a decline in economic freedom.
Hayek's position has been criticised as logically incoherent. Westmoreland argues that, in Hayek's final formulation, any tax system passes the rule of law test provided that it is imposed predictably and thus "Hayek does not achieve the intended synthesis of libertarianism and conservatism." [3].
Private property rights
In the 1960s Alan Greenspan Alan Greenspan is an American economist who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. He currently works as a private advisor and provides consulting for firms through his company, Greenspan Associates LLC. First appointed Federal Reserve chairman by President Ronald Reagan in August 1987, he was reappointed argued that economic freedom requires the gold standard The gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of gold. There are distinct kinds of gold standard. First, the gold specie standard is a system in which the monetary unit is associated with circulating gold coins, or with the unit of value defined in terms of one particular circulating gold for protection of savings from confiscation through inflation.[17]According to the free market view, a secure system of private property rights is an essential part of economic freedom. Such systems include two main rights: the right to control and benefit from property and the right to transfer property by voluntary means. These rights offer people the possibility of autonomy and self-determination according to their personal values and goals.[18] Economist Milton Friedman Milton Friedman was an American economist, statistician, and a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. Among scholars, he is best known for his theoretical and empirical research, especially consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy. He was an economic advisor sees property rights as "the most basic of human rights and an essential foundation for other human rights."[19] With property rights protected, people are free to choose the use of their property, earn on it, and transfer it to anyone else, as long as they do it on a voluntary basis and do not resort to force, fraud or theft. In such conditions most people can achieve much greater personal freedom and development than under a regime of government coercion. A secure system of property rights also reduces uncertainty and encourages investments, creating favorable conditions for an economy to be successful.[20] Empirical evidence suggests that countries with strong property rights systems have economic growth rates almost twice as high as those of countries with weak property rights systems, and that a market system with significant private property rights is an essential condition for democracy.[21] According to Hernando de Soto Hernando de Soto Polar is a Peruvian economist known for his work on the informal economy and on the importance of business and property rights. He is the president of Peru's Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), located in Lima, much of the poverty in the Third World countries is caused by the lack of Western systems of laws and well-defined and universally recognized property rights. De Soto argues that because of the legal barriers poor people in those countries can not utilize their assets to produce more wealth.[22] Pierre Proudhon Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism. After the events of 1848 he began to call himself a federalist, a socialist and anarchist thinker, argued that property is both theft and freedom.[23]
On the other hand, many leftists In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist are generally used to describe support for social change with a view towards creating a more egalitarian society. The terms Left and Right were coined during the French Revolution, referring to the seating arrangement in parliament; those who sat on the left generally supported the radical changes of the dispute that private property means "economic freedom" and believe in a system where people can lay claim to things based on personal use. They claim that "Property is the domination of an individual, or a coalition of individuals, over things; it is not the claim of any person or persons to the use of things" and "this is, usufruct Usufruct is the legal right to use and derive profit or benefit from property that belongs to another person, as long as the property is not damaged. In many legal usufruct systems of property, such as the traditional ejido system in Mexico, individuals or groups may only acquire the usufruct of the property, not legal land ownership, a very different matter. Property means the monopoly of wealth, the right to prevent others using it, whether the owner needs it or not."[24]
Freedom of contract
Freedom of contract Freedom of contract or contractualism[citation needed] is the freedom of individuals to bargain among themselves the terms of their own contracts, without government interference. Anything more than minimal regulations and taxes may be seen as infringements. It is the underpinning of the theory of laissez-faire economics is the right to choose one's contracting parties and to trade with them on any terms and conditions one sees fit. Contracts permit individuals to create their own enforceable legal rules, adapted to their unique situations.[25] Parties decide whether contracts are profitable or fair, but once a contract is made they are obliged to fulfill its terms, even if they are going to sustain losses by doing so. Through making binding promises people are free to pursue their own interests. The main economic function of contracts is to provide transferability of property rights. Transferability largely depends on the enforceability of contracts, which is enabled by the judicial system. In Western societies the state does not enforce all types of contracts, and in some cases it intervenes by prohibiting certain arrangements, even if they are made between willing parties. However, not all contracts need to be enforced by the state. For example, in the United States there is a large number of third-party arbitration Arbitration, a form of alternative dispute resolution , is a legal technique for the resolution of disputes outside the courts, wherein the parties to a dispute refer it to one or more persons (the "arbitrators", "arbiters" or "arbitral tribunal"), by whose decision (the "award") they agree to be bound. It tribunals which resolve disputes under private commercial law.[26] Negatively understood, freedom of contract is freedom from government interference and from imposed value judgments of fairness. The notion of "freedom of contract" was given one of its most famous legal expressions in 1875 by Sir George Jessel MR:[27]
| “ | [I]f there is one thing more than another public policy requires it is that men of full age and competent understanding shall have the utmost liberty of contracting, and that their contracts when entered into freely and voluntarily shall be held sacred and shall be enforced by courts of justice. Therefore, you have this paramount public policy to consider – that you are not lightly to interfere with this freedom of contract. | ” |
The doctrine of freedom of contract received one of its strongest expressions in the US Supreme Court Clerks · Reporter of Decisions case of Lochner v New York which struck down legal restrictions on the working hours of bakers. [4]
Critics of the classical view of freedom of contract argue that this freedom is illusory when the bargaining power of the parties is highly unequal, most notably in the case of contracts between employers and workers. As in the case of restrictions on working hours, workers as a group may benefit from legal protections that prevent individuals agreeing to contracts that require long working hours. In its West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379 , was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States upholding the constitutionality of minimum wage legislation enacted by the State of Washington, overturning an earlier decision in Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.S. 525 (1923) decision in 1937, overturning Lochner, the Supreme Court cited an earlier decisions
| “ | The legislature has also recognized the fact, which the experience of legislators in many States has corroborated, that the proprietors of these establishments and their operatives do not stand upon an equality, and that [p394] their interests are, to a certain extent, conflicting. The former naturally desire to obtain as much labor as possible from their employes, while the latter are often induced by the fear of discharge to conform to regulations which their judgment, fairly exercised, would pronounce to be detrimental to their health or strength. In other words, the proprietors lay down the rules and the laborers are practically constrained to obey them. In such cases, self-interest is often an unsafe guide, and the legislature may properly interpose its authority. | ” |
From this point on, the Lochner view of freedom of contract has been rejected by US courts [6].
Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:25:12 GMT+00:00
Texas Insider The United States is now ranked only mostly free in the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom from the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. ...
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Sosialistene er de som har mest blod pa hendene Av Solheim drypper det http filipspagnoli Solheim ligger vel sann ganske til venstre i skalaen vist ovenfor Endestasjonen til Solheims politikk er Afrika med en rask stopp innom Nord Korea
Juan Carlos Hidalgo
Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:56:18 GM
However, Colombia scores poorly on . economic freedom. . Consequently, the country's outlook won't brighten much more as long as it stifles its economy with high tax rates, burdensome labor regulations, bloated public spending, ...
