comes from Tech Central Station in the form of an article by Hans Labohm, A New Road to Surfdom?

Our freedom and economic well-being are still exposed to hazards, which could be grouped as follows:

• Egalitarianism

• High taxes
• Interest groups
• Trade unionism
• The ideology of stasis
• Regulation
• Precautionary principle
• Man-made global warming and Kyoto.

Egalitarianism

If there is anything at all which socialism still separates from other political currents, it is its emphasis on egalitarianism. … There is a vast political majority in all countries in favour of some kind and some degree of income redistribution. But there is permanent fight about the extent of it, partly because there is a trade-off between the creation of wealth and the distribution of wealth. Overgenerous income redistribution will under??mine incentives, thus diminish?ing the creation of wealth, from which we all suffer. In many countries in Europe, critical thresholds have already been exceeded in that respect.

High Taxes

Tax reduction was part of the so-called supply side revolution. Its aim was to improve the supply side of the economy, as opposed to the demand side, which was the main focus of Keynesianism. The underlying philosophy was illustrated by the so-called Laffer Curve in the seventies, named after the American economist Arthur Laffer. He posed that, beyond a certain level, high tax rates would stifle economic activity, thus lowering total tax revenues for government, while lower tax rates would promote economic activity, with increased government revenues as a result. Tax reduction was a favourite objective of our ministers of finance but has faded into the background over the last few years in many countries because of the recession.

Interest Groups

…The (classical) liberal project for an integrated Europe includes the repeal of the privileges to minority groups at the expense of the immense majority, because they invariably result in impairing the wealth and income of the majority. It was the American economist Mancur Olson who first analysed the growing ossification of national economic systems caused by the advent of special interest groups. The latter are acting as distributional coalitions, i.e., to receive special favours from the government in the form of protection, subsidies, monopolistic status, or other forms of barriers to exit and entry in a particular industry. If successful, their actions turn market participants into rent-seekers, thus stifling economic dynamism and growth.

Trade Unionism

Trade unions deserve separate treatment in the colourful parade of interest groups. European integration and the increased competition that it entails have not substantially weakened their political power. In many countries trade unions are being regarded as esteemed partners in so-called social dialogue. Their involvement has even been enshrined in the institutional arrangements on European level in the framework of the macroeconomic dialogue of the EMU. But the same well-respected dialogue partners have for a long time held our societies hostage, in the sense that they have effectively blocked all kinds of socio-economic reforms which are long overdue, including the efforts to make labour markets more flexible and to reform pension schemes, so that they will become sustainable. It should not be forgotten that society as a whole pays a high price for this kind of behaviour of a minority imposing its will on the majority. Just by way of illustration, in Germany only 18 percent of the workers are member of a trade union.

But there are signs that the public at large is fed up with it. In France — of all places — a popular movement has emerged, called Libert?, j’?cris ton nom (Freedom, I write your name), led by a young student Sabine Herold. The movement has publicly opposed the strikes of civil servants and public sector employees, which have become a favourite pastime in France. It has mount?ed a massive counter-demonstration mobilizing 100,000 people. It never happened before, either in France or anywhere else.

The Ideology of Stasis

Then there is the ideology of stasis, a notion that has been coined by the American author Virginia Postrel. She points out that despite the fact that today we have greater wealth, health, opportunity, and choice than at any time in history, there is a chorus of intellectuals and politicians who loudly lament our condition. Technology, they say, enslaves us. Economic change makes us insecure. Popular culture coarsens and brutalizes us. Consumerism despoils the environment. The future, they say, is dangerously out of control, and unless we rein in these forces of change and guide them closely, we risk disaster.

In her book, The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel explodes this myth, embarking on a bold exploration of how progress really occurs. In a multitude of areas of endeavour she shows how and why unplanned, open-ended trial and error — not conformity to one central vision — is the key to human betterment. Thus, the true enemies of humanity’s future are those who insist on prescribing outcomes in advance, circumventing the process of competition and experiment in favour of their own preconceptions and prejudices.

Postrel argues that these conflicting views of progress, rather than the traditional left and right, increasingly define our political and cultural debate. On one side, she identifies a collection of strange bedfellows with different political backgrounds — from right to left — who all share a devotion to what she calls “stasis,” a controlled, uniform society that changes only with permission from some central authority. On the other side is an emerging coalition in support of what Postrel calls “dynamism”: an open-ended society where creativity and enterprise, operating under predictable rules, generate progress in unpredictable ways. Dynamists are united not by a single political agenda but by an appreciation for such complex evolutionary processes as scientific inquiry, market competition, artistic development, and technological invention.

Regulation: Good, Bad, and Ugly

As far as regulation is concerned, deregulation efforts of the eighties seem to have reversed gears and degenerated into something what looks like a new regulation frenzy. But like Sergio Leone in his masterly spaghetti Western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” we have to make a clear distinction between different sorts of regulation. The good regulation is supportive of free markets. This sort of regulation manifests itself for instance in the European financial services sector. The bad regulation stifles markets. This kind of regulation manifests itself if many markets of goods, especially as regards overzealous safety and environmental require?ments. And the ugly regulation has a protectionist effect. In agriculture, for instance, the de facto prohibition of the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Europe, offers a case in point. All is all, one can hardly escape the feeling that there is far too much regulation of the bad and ugly types.

Precautionary Principle

Furthermore, there is the precautionary principle. Who doesn’t want to be better safe than sorry? Yet, there are limits. If pushed to extremes, the cost of precaution could easily outweigh the benefits. We finance the fire brigade via our taxes, but not every house has a sprinkler installation. And at the apogee of the Cold War, there were even people who did not possess a nuclear shelter in their backyard.

In other words, a risk-free world is unthinkable and there are limits to the application of the precautionary principle. We believe that some risks are too small to warrant additional expenditure. If we would spend more on them, then we will have to forgo the satisfaction of other needs, including the precautionary measures that will protect us against other risks that we believe to be more likely. In short, the application of the precautionary principle should be subject to the same simple cost-benefit analysis, which we also apply in all other fields of human decision-making… Excessive application of the precautionary principle prevents action until there is complete certainty that it will not produce any harm. But 100 percent safety can never be guaranteed. The result is paralysis and stagnation.

Man-Made Global Warming and Kyoto

At the same time another spectre is haunting us, if we may believe the official position of the EU: man-made global warming! But the putative threat of man-made global warming is probably a statistical artefact. Surface-based temperature measurements do indeed show some increase in worldwide temperatures, but these measurements are unreliable. They are skewed because of several reasons; for instance, the closing down of two-thirds of weather stations over the past three decades. The remaining stations are often in urban regions that are exposed to the so-called urban heat island effect, which means that cities are warming up as the population increases, while the open countryside is not. The most accurate temperature measurements — those by satellites — do not show any significant global warming. So global warming does not pose a serious threat. But the measures that have been proposed to counter it do! They entail an additional layer of costly bureaucratic regulation and will stifle economic growth.

Hat tip to Advised by Wolves