Market and Freedom by Professor Dwight R. Lee

Market and Freedom by Professor Dwight R. Lee The Cold War is the long time war that was taken among the former USSR and the United States of America, and the war started immediately after the end of World War II. This war was essentially a clash, or a war, of two different ideologies; the Capitalism and the Communism. The Collapse of the former Soviet Union and its transition toward the free market economy proved that capitalism and its principles as the proper way of life. Capitalism's principles such as the privatization, specialization, small state authority, individual rights, freedom, and free market economy became the ideal and the model for many nations to follow. However, in this context the questions that might present themselves for analysis are: Ø Are there any threats that might undermine this free market economy model? Ø What kind of threats these are? Ø How can this model be protected from these threats? A considerable viewpoint for answering these questions has been presented by Professor Dwight R. Lee, in his article "Market and Freedom". This article is an attempt of providing some visions to protect the values of free market economy. The author of the article believes that through the social and productive cooperation, the society can reach its wealth and prosperity. The production cooperation has two main elements, freedom and good health. However, the author emphasizes that freedom is more important than good health and wealth as well. He points out that "the sick people can be productive, but without freedom the productive cooperation of the marketplace is impossible." He also clarified that the rich people could not enjoy their wealth without freedom. Moreover, Professor Dwight mentions that there is mutual dependence among the production and freedom. He clarified this idea in two points. First, "Markets requires freedom". The author attacks the centralized government that prevents the freedom and dominates the information flows, which is an important element of the market economy. Second, "freedom requires markets". Professor Lee emphasizes that privatization protects individual freedom. In this context he mentions for an important example that we might experience in everyday life, "the pollution problems." These are real problems in our world today, especially in the over populated cities and countries such as Mexico City and Cairo.