Customer Reviews

Transformation: The Promise and Politics of Empowerment

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It is tempting to see Libertarianism as being just another way of making sure the guys who now have the power get to keep it. Its ideas are easily viewed as being supportive of both the entrenchment of class divides and of racial bias. Bolick is careful early in this book to establish his credibility as a person interested in empowering 'the little guy' regardless of race. He gives numerous cases where governmental barriers have proven more burdensome than helpful to the underprivileged. He does shoot himself in the foot by attributing 'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime," to the Bible instead of Confucius. It suggests that this is a book aimed primarily at red state readers; but the problems he talks about are primarily those of the bluest parts of the map.

The main areas of interest of the book relate to improving education, employment, and community. The first is about school choice. This chapter makes a powerful argument that the 'dollars should follow the pupil.' School choice can improve the quality of education and has started to do so in several places. Schools organized around a few hundred pupils have been shown over and over to do better than ones of larger scale. ( The reason for this, Bolick does not state, but it has to do with the way people organize into societies in which most people know most others; and this organizational theme recurs throughout this book)

In a second main segment Bolick argues for economic liberty. Here there are more issues to argue and the arguments are a little less convincing. Some of the arguments seem obvious - making single-point gateways to allow 'one stop' shopping for entrpreneurs who wish to set up small businesses. And eliminating laws and regulations whose primary purpose is to limit entry into certain fields. He argues, I believe, to do away with licensing for a large number of fields; but one could achieve the effects he advocates if licensing were either made voluntary or if 'apprentice' licensing allowed people to acquire the requisite skills on the job.

It would be tempting to disagree with Bolick about union contracts and construction workers had I not lived in Texas where houses were built properly by non-union workers and in New Jersey where they were built badly by union workers paid anywhere from two to ten times the rate.

The third segment involves community renewal. Bolick proposes a number of initiatives that organize communities into cohesive groups that recognize and trust each other. One pillar of this is ending welfare. He sees Wisconsin's program which 'virtually guarantees' a job and necessary child care as being a good model. It's more costly, he notes, but it gives communities and individuals what they need, a sense of ownership, pride, and work experience. He advocates community policing and organizing neighborhoods to empower individuals and to respond responsibly to crime.

There are a lot of ideas in this book. Some new, some old, some tame, some bold. Jumping in with both feet and without thinking of the consequences has a potential for creating some problems current systems were constructed to prevent - organized crime and police corruption wrt cops on the beat, for instance. Notwithstanding such objections, this is a good overview of a class of problems and a fresh set of approaches to address them. It is encouraging to learn that some of the experiments are working.