Leaving Liberty?

Metastasizing financial and business regulation threatens economic freedom—including the all-important freedom to go broke—according to this collection of pithy libertarian essays.

Mazorra, an investment consultant, author (Make Lemonade: A Bright View on Investing, on Financial Markets and on the Economy, 2007) and blogger styles these 31 essays, each a few pages long, as a “daily devotional” for those whose faith in the free market needs bolstering in a time of massive government intervention. With brevity in mind, he distills his ideas into vivid impressions and punchy parables: He likens the Obama Administration’s economic stimulus programs to a doctor who gives a bleeding patient one blood transfusion after another but never stitches up the wound; meanwhile, political leaders who vow to cut deficits over the coming decades “sound like the proverbial gambler begging the mob, on behalf of his kneecaps, for just a little more time.” Mazorra backs up his colorful imagery with incisive, accessible analyses of economic principles. The bankruptcies averted by the auto industry bailout, he argues, would not have been a catastrophe for the American economy since much of the business lost in the shuttering of Chrysler or GM would have been picked up by Japanese car companies’ factories and dealerships in the United States. Similarly, he contends, unemployment caused by disruptive technologies or free trade is more than compensated by lower prices to consumers and new jobs in growing industries and export companies. Throughout, he emphasizes that “pain is essential.” By forcing companies and individuals to bear the consequences of their bad choices, the free market disciplines them far more effectively than the effects of government regulation and bailouts can. Mazorra’s doctrines definitely tilt right, but he’s evenhanded in his criticisms of Democrats and Republicans in their common subservience to special interests and preference for expedient politics over sound policy. Although his arguments can seem simplistic at times, he offers common sense and meticulous reasoning wrapped in lucid, down-to-earth prose that illuminates economic conundrums.

Short, sometimes acerbic commentaries on the virtues of markets and the sins of overweening government.