Free Market

As Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin begins his first state visit to Washington today, he is experiencing one of those strange summers at home, when people frolic in the sun after the darkness of winter, daily routines are broken and everyday activities begin to slide even worse than usual.During his unsuccessful six-year attempt to turn the Soviet Union around, Mikhail S. Gorbachev always had his worst political troubles in the summer. Even the clumsy coup against him occurred in the summer.

The March 29 article, "When consumers lack information, free market system falters" by Charles Scott, Fred Derrick, and Andrew Samuel displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how markets work by these authors. They claim that because sellers have more information about their products and services than buyers, most sellers will cheat or defraud their customers. Nonsense. Baltimore Sun reporters have more information about daily news than their readers, and economics professors have more information about the field of economics than their readers do, but that does not guarantee that they are frauds and cheats and that the markets for newspapers and higher education "fail."

The United State is blessed with an abundant, high quality food supply produced at the lowest cost of any country on earth. Productivity of American farmers, and their rich natural resources, is unexcelled.But the federal Depression-era agricultural support and subsidy program, created to save devastated family farms and now an entitlement of giant corporations and absentee landlords, is ripe for major reform. The $12 billion a year in farm subsidies is taxpayer money ill spent, based on a dubious policy of pessimism, parochial markets and statist planning.

Former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar makes no apologies for the radical economic reforms he enacted in 1992 and 1993, even though the backlash against them forced him out of Russian President Boris Yeltsin's cabinet in January, and he says his country needs more of the same."

The Polish voters did not on Sunday elect a return to communism, dictatorship and a command economy. What they sought, rather, was something like Western European social democracy. But they did this by giving power to politicians who used to be Communists. This was not an election to end all elections, but a traditional democratic response of voters in hard times, blaming those in power and throwing the rascals out.That's a shame, because the "shock therapy" of Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka's government, following free market and austerity mandates of the International Monetary Fund, was working.

AUSTIN, Texas - Those of the populist persuasion are struggling against what is perhaps the most irresistible of all temptations - the urge to say, "I told you so." It is raining evidence these days. The newspaper business sections are turning into the Daily Fraud Update. Deloitte & Touche is now under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for its role in the unpleasant doings at Adelphia, energy CEOs keep biting the dust - first at CMS, then at Dynegy - the Arthur Andersen trial in Houston gets more depressing by the day and corporate evildoers are suddenly ubiquitous.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A few days after Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his run for governor, Fox News pundit Brit Hume sounded hopeful. "California is a special case," he said, "a place where conservatives and Republicans have been doing nothing but suck canal water now for a decade or so. And their standards of how pure you have to be, I think, are going to be very forgiving in this race, which will help Schwarzenegger." Such predictions ignore a subterranean reality: Mr. Schwarzenegger's candidacy threatens to expose a deep fault line below the surface of long-standing GOP ideology -- the disconnect between championing "the free market" and extolling the centrality of "family values."

This week one airline has decided to charge for carry-on baggage. Senator Benjamin Cardin said he was "appalled" and decided to introduce a bill that would halt any airline from charging for carry-on baggage. My question is why? Why does he feel he has the right to introduce a bill that would restrict a private company from charging a fee for a service they offer? If we as consumers do not wish to pay to carry our baggage onto a plane, we can choose another airline to travel on. If we choose to fly on that airline, then we are choosing to pay that fee. That is what competition and the free market is all about.

If Michale Barr ("Let market decide when wind blows," Feb. 7) is correct that technologies succeed only when the free market aligns to demand and finance them, then we have wasted billions on the development of such crackpot schemes as aviation, satellite communications, hydro-power, interstate highways, nuclear energy, global positioning and, perhaps the biggest government boondoggle of all time, the Internet. The government led all of these efforts when all the market demanded was faster horses, better steam locomotives and more whale oil. By positioning Maryland as a frontrunner in developing clean, alternative energy sources, Gov.Martin O'Malleyis asking us to create an state where future generations have the infrastructure needed to prosper.

Let market determine value of open space In his column "Redefining property rights" (Commentary, Oct. 17), Roy Gothie wastes no time getting to his agenda, claiming that "any property rights a landowner possesses exist mainly to serve the greater public good." Let's put aside that property rights actually exist because citizens enter into a free society created by the people to pursue their own ends as long as they don't interfere with others. Let's ignore that this free American economy - based on property rights - has provided people the peace of mind to invest and grow their society to far greater lengths than any other in history.