Bill Clinton, vapid celebrity

Former president and tabloid superstar Bill Clinton told the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, Saturday that the world's three biggest problems are, in order, global warming, global inequality, and the "apparently irreconcilable" religious and cultural differences behind terrorism.

His solution for the three problems? Clean energy, an effort to find "the way to promote economic and political integration in a manner that benefits the vast majority of the people in all societies and makes them feel that they are benefited by it," and dialogue with Hamas.

All right, just for a moment, let's treat the man like a serious thinker and not like Arkansas's answer to Angelina Jolie.

He's wrong.

First, there is no reason to believe that global warming can be affected by the small changes it is possible for us to make (read "The awkward truth about global warming"). Regardless, the world thinks it's a great idea to force U.S. companies to pay crippling sums of money for new equipment that will make only a marginal difference in emissions. The world thinks it's a great idea to set up an international regime of penalties that acts as a wealth-transfer tax between the United States and everybody else. The U.S. Senate doesn't think it's a great idea, something Bill Clinton recognized when he boldly embraced the Kyoto Treaty and then never submitted it to the Senate for ratification.

There may be a deeper reason to pursue limits on U.S. industry in the name of climate change, and that brings us to the former president's second-ranked world problem, "global inequality."

The premise of Mr. Clinton's view is that wealth is distributed around the world in a random and inexplicable way, therefore fairness demands that those who have it, like the United States, give some of it to those who do not have it, like the African nations or perhaps China.

The premise is wrong because wealth is not distributed randomly around the world. The United States is wealthy because it has a free economy and a political system that protects individual rights and private property. People in the United States can farm, invest, build and create with the assurance that if their work brings a return, it will belong to them and not be seized (not entirely seized, anyway) in the name of "the people."

This system will work in any country, in any climate, in any era. To see the process in reverse, study the recent history of Zimbabwe. The country was a breadbasket for the region when its farms were private property, and when the land was seized by tyrant leader Robert Mugabe and handed off to cronies, the country descended into poverty and now pleads for food aid.

When a free country sends money and aid to a country that does not recognize or protect individual rights and private property, nothing changes. Three hours later, they're hungry again. And people like Bill Clinton are right there to shake a finger and tell you it's your fault for not sending more. Sometimes they throw in a threat that worldwide insurrection is around the corner unless you sign the check right now.

That brings us to the former president's third-ranked world problem, the irreconcilable religious and cultural differences that lead to terrorism.

The falsehood of this premise can be seen in the Palestinian territories right now. The Palestinian Muslims of Hamas and the Palestinian Muslims of Fatah's "armed wing," the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, are threatening to kill each other.

Why?

Here's how Knight Ridder explained it:

Hamas' overwhelming victory - it won at least 76 of the 132 seats in the Palestinian legislature - has created widespread anxiety among Fatah members who have relied on their political connections for secure paychecks that are now in jeopardy.

They have "relied on their political connections." Where there is no freedom in the economy, where all the jobs are handed out by the people who control the government, there will be a bloody struggle for control of the government. There's no other course open. It doesn't matter if the groups are divided along ethnic, religious, cultural, geographic or made-up gang lines. The fight stems from the fact that an individual's only path to economic security is through membership in the group. Loyalty is rewarded. Dissent is not a good career choice. This is the context in which grieving mothers of suicide bombers tell news cameras they are happy their sons are dead.

These so-called irreconcilable cultural and religious differences are always about money. A close look at the fight between the Shiites and the Sunnis in Iraq reveals that they're arguing over control of the country's oil revenue. In Iraq, where "the oil belongs to the Iraqi people," the group that controls the government controls all the wealth of the country and the economic future of everybody in it. You bet they're fighting.

The only way to stop the fighting is to minimize the stakes. The state-owned enterprises must be privatized. Once the Iraqis can get high-paying jobs with private companies, jobs that can't be taken away by the government, they will be as bored with politics as we are.

People think high voter turn-out and a high level of political involvement are signs of a healthy democracy. Actually they're signs that the government has the power to kill you (think about draft protests during the Vietnam war) and is right on the edge of doing it.

You'd think Bill Clinton would know that.

Well, then, let's stop treating him like a serious thinker and recognize him for the superb performer that he is. The man knows how to read an audience:

Clinton won frequent enthusiastic applause -- not a common situation at the annual gathering in the Swiss Alps -- for articulating a global vision more conciliatory and inclusive than the one many of the assembled tend to associate with U.S. politics.

Conciliatory and inclusive. That's what the confused corporate titans in Davos think they should be. They should spend a little time reading Ayn Rand and maybe then they'd understand that it's not philanthropy but profit-hungry enterprise that is their greatest contribution to mankind.


Copyright 2006

Editor's note: You might be interested to read A Plan to Get Out of Iraq: Blackstone's Fundamental Rights and the Power of Property and the source notes that accompany it.