If you want to increase peace and prosperity around the world, you should fight for more economic freedom (economic freedom is a measure of an economies low taxes, low regulations, promotion of free-trade, low welfare state, etc and especially rule of law and property rights etc) around the world.
The Globalization Institution reports:
Economic freedom is the key to prosperity. Many persist in regretting this equation, but few now doubt its truth. But classical liberals also argue that economic freedom causes peace, and now comes new evidence that the causal link between economic freedom and peace is real, and significant.
Economic freedom is almost 50 times more effective than democracy in diminishing violent conflict between nations, according to the Economic Freedom of the World: 2005 Annual Report, released today by The Fraser Institute.
In new research published in this year’s report, Erik Gartzke, a political scientist from Columbia University, compares the impact of economic freedom on peace to that of democracy on peace.
In fact, it is economic freedom, not democracy, that is the primary cause of peace:
When measures of both economic freedom and democracy are included in a statistical study, economic freedom is about 50 times more effective than democracy in diminishing violent conflict. The impact of economic freedom on whether states fight or have a military dispute is highly significant, while democracy is not a statistically significant predictor of conflict.
Nations with a low score for economic freedom (below 2 out of 10) are 14 times more prone to conflict than states with a high score (over 8 ). The overall pattern of results does not shift when additional variables, such as membership in the European Union, nuclear capability, and regional factors, are added.
The division of labor has more.
Update: R.J. Rummel, sometimes referred to as one of the godfathers of quantitative research in international relations, disagrees with the findings.
What’s up HP-
I know I’m singing to the choir but two important etc’s of economic freedom to stress are the rule of law and property rights. Without those a lot of the bennefits of the previously mentioned factors go out the window.
Good post. This website is turning into an encyclopedia of knowledge.
You should know who this is ~ Woooooaaaahhhh ~ For once since we met I think I can agree with you ~ Economic freedom in principle does make more sense…Now that we can agree to that fact, and to most, after this reading, and using common sense should agree, by why not you man Bush. Why do we have to go to war, why not practice what most would agree is a sound principle ~ But lets not start at the world, lets start at home ~ Economic freedom is an unknown to many in our own home land ~ you and I both have lived that, what do we tell our own people, why can we not help home instead of others??
Peter,
Good point, I can’t believe I missed that, I’ll add it above.
Big D,
Woooooooaaaaaaaa!!! What’s up big homie, long time no talk, thanks for stopping by.
About Bush and the Iraq war, as you may have noticed from my website, I am not exactly gungho about the war. While I did support the war, and to a certain degree continue to, I do so very reluctantly, especially because it is the poor that bear a disproportionate amount of the cost in all of this. So while I continue to support the war, you’re not going to find a Bush defender in me on that point, I leave that to others who feel passionately about that issue, cuz I certainly don’t.