For now, I'll offer three reasons that libertarianism is the right approach for America on the eve of the new millennium. First, we are not nearly as prosperous as we could be. If our economy were growing at the rate it grew from 1945 to 1973, our gross domestic product would be 40 percent larger than it is. But that's not the real measure of the economic harm that excessive government is doing to us. More reliance on markets and individual enterprise would mean more wealth for all of us, which is especially important for those who have the least today.
Government taxes too much, regulates too much, interferes too much.
Politicians from Jesse Helms to Jesse Jackson seek to impose their own moral agenda on 250 million Americans. Third, in a fast-changing world where every individual has unprecedented access to information, centralized bureaucracies and coercive regulations just can't keep up with the real economy. Global capital markets mean that investors won't be held hostage by national governments and their confiscatory tax systems. New opportunities for telecommuting will mean that more and more workers will also have the ability to flee high taxes and other intrusive government policies. Prosperous nations in the 21st century will be those that attract productive people.