Martin Luther King's Free-Market Legacy

Martin Luther King's Free-Market Legacy
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Martin Luther King proclaimed that he had a dream that “…my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  His dream was far more powerful than it is given credit for.  It is a general call for freedom and free-market prosperity.  People can not be free unless they are free from the constraints of government and can choose where to work, what to do, where to travel and reside, what to purchase, what school to attend, and so on, on the basis of what they perceive is best for them and their families.  There is no freedom without without a free market system and the ability to own what you want and to keep what you own.  Through his work to expand freedom, Martin Luther King aided out market economy’s ability to create wealth for all Americans.

To prove to oneself that freedom and free markets are necessary for prosperity, one only needs to look around the world and ask why some nations are rich and others dirt poor.  The Index of Economic Liberty produced by the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Organization or the Freedom of the World, by the Fraser Institute document that the freest nations are also the wealthiest nations.  How and why does this occur?  Market prices communicate information on what people desire most as consumers, and on how they can, as producers, develop and use their talents to best serve consumers.  These market  pries and the incentives they provide are distorted when some are denied opportunities to get a good education, take jobs for which they are qualified, and shop where they choose.  Our market economy and the opportunities and prosperity it provides depend on freedom.

But freedom also depends on markets.  Freedom is more easily accepted when market prices are motivating people to use their freedom in ways that serve the interests of others.  Markets also disperse authority, making it less likely that power will become concentrated in the hands of a few elite who can use it to perpetuate their control by suppressing the freedom of others.

No one argues that the market economy always works perfectly, or that it eliminates restrictions on freedom motivated by prejudice and those wiling to pay the cost of that prejudice.  If it did, there would have been no need for the civil-rights movement and few would have heard of Martin Luther King.

Freedom is best protected and extended in economies relying on markets.  Freedoms taken for granted in market economies are routinely, and often brutally, suppressed in economies relying on state ownership and central planning.  How successful would a champion of freedom for an oppressed group have been in the former Soviet Union or China during the 1950s and 1960s, or be today in North Korea, Iran,  Cuba, Sudan or Zimbabwe?

Fortunately, Martin Luther King was born in America.  And through his eloquence, heroic action and sacrifice he led a civil-rights movement that extended the freedom that most Americans had long enjoyed to African Americans – the freedom to pursue their goals and dreams by making the fullest use od their talents and energies.

The value of our own freedom is something we all understand. But,  it is often overlooked that in a market economy the value of our freedom is increased as more people share in that freedom.  As the great economist Friedrich Hayek pointed out in his 1960 book, The Constitution of Liberty,  most of the value we receive from expanding freedoms are not from those we take advantage of ourselves but from the freedoms taken advantage from others.  When African Americans have the freedom to get the educations, work in the jobs, and start the businesses that improve their lives they are also improving the lives, and prosperity of all of us. 

Of course, it’s not just the additional wealth that we realize from expanding freedom that defines the legacy of Martin Luther King.  Freedom is valuable for reasons that cannot be measured in strictly economic terms, and the blessings of freedom can be fully realized only when they are available to all.  We are all diminished morally, as well as economically, when some are denied the freedom to realize their full potential.

Martin Luther King made an enormous contribution to the economic well-being of all Americans.  In market economies, freedom and prosperity reinforce each other and Martin Luther King deserves the gratitude of all Americans for his contribution to both expanding our freedom and increasing our free-market prosperity.

William J. Boyes is Professor Emeritus in Economics at Arizona State Unviversity where he is the Founding Director of the Center for Study of Economic Liberty.  Dwight R. Lee is the William J. O'Neill Professor of Global Markets and Freedom at Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business, and he is a Liberty Fellow at the Center for Study of Economic Liberty.  

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