Senator Phil Gramm and Economist Donald Boudreaux Win Liberty Fund Prize for Advancing Economic Liberty

Last night in the heartland town of Carmel, Ind., we were pleased to present the Liberty Fund Prize for Advancing Economic Freedom. The winners were former Senator Phil Gramm and economist Donald Boudreaux, who will split the $100,000 prize. The award ceremony was held in coincidence with an Indianapolis meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society, founded in 1947 by Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and other bright lights of the economic freedom movement.

My comments on the award to Gramm and Boudreaux:

The American experience has been one long demonstration of the power and efficacy of free markets. Success has bred one success after another. Yet here we find ourselves on our 250^th birthday knocked back on our heels by what Professor Hayek would have called “the Socialists of all parties.” How could that possibly have happened?

Part of the problem, surely, is rhetorical. While the friends of freedom are obliged to make complex and even counterintuitive arguments — most famously, that the general prosperity is best served by empowering individuals to pursue their private interests — the statists offer no alternative intellectual construct, only rough appeals to  human reflex. While the friends of freedom are obliged to make their case with cogency and constantly freshened formulations of our timeless proposition, that is, the statists have only to tease our hopes and stoke our resentments. That is a debate not easily won.

Then comes the hard part. Friends of freedom must present evidence of their success to a jury of their superiors — to the cultural overlords, including well-placed statists and lightly educated members of the media. The standard by which the free economy is then judged is not its real-world performance, but how it measures up to ideologically aspirational tropes about income gaps and wealth inequalities.

It seems to be the lot of the free economy that it must perform prodigiously, over and over. And then it must re-justify its existence, over and over.

It is thus with a mixture of admiration, affection and relief that we recognize our champions, Drs. Phil Gramm and Donald Boudreaux, for their brilliant and tireless efforts in advancing economic liberty.

Neal B. Freeman

Chairman, the Neal and Jane Freeman Foundation