Visiting US economist: Free market is good for religion
05/21/2012 23:47
“If you don’t have a free market and your religion is not the majority, you have real problems,” David D. Friedman says.
DAVID D. FRIEDMAN Photo: Yonit Schiller
Free markets are good for religion, and religion can often be good for the free
market, visiting US economist and legal scholar David D. Friedman told The
Jerusalem Post Monday.
Friedman was in Israel to speak at a conference
organized by the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies entitled “Religion and
Economic Liberty: A Match Made in Heaven?” The conference was organized to
coincide with the 100th birthday of Friedman’s father, the late Milton Friedman,
who was considered one of the 20th century’s most influential
economists.
“If you don’t have a free market and your religion is not the
majority, you have real problems,” Friedman said.
“After all, if the
government decides which books to print and you are 10 percent of the population
and they don’t like you very much, you may not get your version of the Bible
published very often.
“And if the government decides who gives speeches,
and if it publishes the newspapers, it is hard for any minority to survive. And
I think that’s the reason Jews have done better in free market societies than in
places like the Soviet Union.”
Friedman says he is “not a religious
believer,” although he takes a particular interest in Jewish law, and teaches a
course at Santa Clara University about halakha, Islamic law, imperial Chinese
law, native American law and other ancient legal systems. He is also writing a
book on the same topic, under the working title Legal Systems Very Different
from Ours.
Giving an example from Talmudic law, Friedman explained that
religions can play a role in strengthening the free market. “If you read
Maimonides, there were some legal situations where whether or not you were
willing to swear on something decided whether you won or lost the case,” he
said.
“This is a case where religion actually helps the market work,
because the religion gives you a lie detector. If you are a believer, you will
be very reluctant to swear a false oath, either because you think God will
punish you or because you think you ought not to do it. It’s easier to make the
market work if you have a way of making people tell the truth. It’s true of some
other legal systems, not only Jewish law.”