Like many of you, Robert J. Barro’s Getting It Right brought back fond memories of Elliott and Hurley’s reading. Particularly, Barro’s book reiterated the lessons on development we learned from Sen, Pritchett, Yen, and other- that governments need to couple increased political freedoms with freer markets, rule of law (which itself helps facilitate free markets; ex: property rights), and increased health, education, and fertility control initiatives. He makes the argument that increased political freedoms, brought about without these other project in place, is actually detrimental to democracy: “Once these kinds of variables are held constant, an increase in political freedom has an overall negative (but small) impact on growth”. He goes on to label political freedoms a luxury good sustainable only in developed countries". I believe that democracy is important and intrinsically good, but you wont vote if you're too malnourished to leave your house and you can't vote if there are no laws ensuring your right to do so.
Barro’s section on The Optimal Size of a Nation, or the Attractions of Succession gave me added perspective on the Georgia/South Ossetia conflict on which I wrote my last PPE paper. Given the historical precedent of the U.S.’s civil war, he writes, the U.S. has more often than not, opposed the succession of countries with knee jerk reaction. He argues that the U.S. should support separatist movements lead by suppressed minorities, despite the smallness of the territory they hope to claim, and despite the availability of natural resources in the territory (trade can bring what is needed), so long as they have the will to bring about a solid government with guarantees on property rights and allow for free trade. While I agreed with these end claims, I was a little turned off by the process he used to get to it. Specifically, in arguing for the benefits of a homogeneous population, he reduces diversity to mean “inequality in potential earnings”(30). That is, diversity is reduced to the presence of different classes. He goes on to argue that diversity “ leads to the creation of interest groups that spend their time lobbying the central government to redistribute resources in their favor… encouraging people to expend resources in unproductive ways.” (30). Isn’t it a little cynical to believe diversity, even if it’s just in terms of income levels, solely leads to inefficiency? Further, how can inequality in potential earnings within a country’s borders be entirely eliminating without creating a socialist state, or confining all the doctors in the world to one country and all janitors to another? Back to Georgia, he would argue for South Ossetia’s right to separate from Georgia.
Although Barro makes a case against any government regulations on ETS and really casts doubts on the causality of ETS and lung cancer, I still believe we’re better off prohibiting smoking in certain closed-air public places. While the libertarian will argue against us infringing on a smoker’s right, I think these increased regulations are a result of the greater non-smoking population demanding cleaner air.
