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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015 | A9
OPINION
W
henever I think of Greece
and its economy, I can’t
help but recall the stoolsample story.
Sorry to begin on a scatological note, but here’s a revealing
tale about a country that, by
electing the radical left-wing
Syriza party over the weekend,
just voted itself down the toilet.
In 2011, Greek entrepreneur Fotis
Antonopoulos
and his partners
decided to start
OliveShop.com,
an online store
GLOBAL
specializing in orVIEW
ganic
olive-oil
By Bret
products.
Stephens
Before
they
could start their business, they
first needed the right paperwork.
As recounted in the Greek newspaper Ekathimerini, authorizations
were required from the government tax office, the local municipality, the fire department. Also
the bank, which insisted that the
entire website be in Greek—and
only in Greek—despite Mr. Antonopoulos’s attempts to explain
that he intended to market his
products to foreign customers.
And then there was the health
department, which informed Mr.
Antonopoulos that company shareholders would be required to furnish chest X-rays and, yes, stool
samples. Greece has standards,
you know.
It took OliveShop.com 10 months
to get all the right stamps, certificates and signoffs. The problem
with the bank was resolved only
when Mr. Antonopoulos opted for
PayPal instead. Registering with
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, by contrast, took him all
of 24 hours and one five-minute
digital form.
The stool story is a useful reminder that, when it comes to
understanding the economic life
of a nation, it’s worth looking at
Wassilios Aswestopoulos/Zuma Press
Greece’s Last Evasion
Syriza party leader Alexis Tsipras celebrates in Athens, Jan. 25.
the micro-side first. As told in
the pages of most Western newspapers, Greece’s economy is best
measured in debt-to-GDP ratios
(174.9% in 2014), external debt
(still north of €400 billion), bond
yields (9.3% on the 10-year) and
so on.
These are all useful data points,
assuming you know how to draw
the right conclusions. But the
study of economics—the word
derives from the Greek oikos,
meaning “house,” plus nemein,
meaning “manage,” to form oikonomia, or “household management”—needs to start with the
basics. Like: What does it take to
start a business in Greece? What
does it take just to get by?
The OliveShop tale is a case
study in what it takes to start a
business legally. Yet the whole
purpose of these peculiar regulatory roadblocks is to create
opportunities to grease the skids
with a fakellaki—the little envelope, stuffed with cash—that gets
you the necessary certificate, or
the government contract, or the
timely medical appointment. When
I interviewed Syriza leader (now
Prime Minister) Alexis Tsipras in
New York two years ago, his first
question to me was: “Here in the
United States, why do you not
have this phenomenon of passing
money under the table?”
My answer was that you’re
less likely to seek a bribe if you
can make an honest profit instead: Capitalism is the only real
cure for corruption. Mr. Tsipras
demurred, arguing that what was
really necessary was a “revolution in conscience.” Good luck to
him with that.
The reality of Greece—and the
one that now confronts Mr.
Tsipras—is that the country has
been playing economic make-believe for decades. The state offers national health insurance:
People then pay bribes in order
to obtain treatment. The state
imposes stiff tax rates to comply
with the expectations of Brussels
or the demands of the International Monetary Fund: People
then figure out how to evade
their taxes. The state makes a
show of maintaining a First
World regulatory architecture:
The regulations are subverted
through bribery, misreporting
and other fixes.
How do people get by? They
cheat. That cheating is less a
moral indictment of the cheaters
individually, or of the character
of the Greeks generally, than it is
of the system that gives normal
BOOKSHELF | By Dinitia Smith
people no other good choice if
they want to survive.
i
i
i
Margaret
Thatcher
once
quipped that the problem with
socialism is that eventually you
run out of other people’s money.
For Greece, “eventually” took an
especially long time, since it
always found a way of freeloading off of someone else: Washington, after the Truman Doctrine
was declared in 1947; Brussels,
after it joined the European Community in 1981; Frankfurt, after it
lied its way into the eurozone in
2001; Berlin, after the onset of
the euro crisis in 2010.
Now the game might at last be
up. German Chancellor Angela
Merkel has made it clear that she
will not allow Athens to renegotiate the terms of its bailout, which
is what Mr. Tsipras had been
counting on in the conceit that the
EU would never let Greece fail. A
bad bet.
Mr. Tsipras will now have to
choose between buckling to the
demands of his paymasters,
doubling down on socialism, finding another rescuer (maybe China,
since Russia is no longer available), or belatedly discovering the
virtues of free markets that allow
the rule of law to take root.
My guess is that Mr. Tsipras
will find a face-saving way to
buckle, and Greece will continue
to stagger along. The most painful
outcome, but perhaps also the
best, would be a forced Greek exit
from the eurozone that serves as
a dramatic warning to the rest of
Europe’s lackluster reformers
about what happens to countries
that take their economics lessons
from the op-ed page of the New
York Times.
The vote for Mr. Tsipras and
his radical leftists is Greece’s
final flight from reality. Elections
have consequences. The Greeks
are about to discover theirs.
Write to [email protected]
A Modest Uptick in U.S. Economic Freedom
By Terry Miller
A
steep, seven-year decline in
U.S. economic freedom has
come to an end, according
to the 2015 Index of Economic
Freedom, published Tuesday by
the Heritage Foundation and The
Wall Street Journal. The U.S.
score in the index experienced a
particularly large drop in 2009-10,
pushing this country out of the
“free” category and into the
“mostly free” category. A slight
0.7-point uptick this year has allowed the U.S. to retain its 12thplace ranking.
The index measures commitment to free enterprise on a scale
of 0 to 100 by evaluating policies
related to the rule of law, government size, regulatory efficiency
and market openness. Restraint in
the growth of government spending drove the modest improvement in the U.S. score.
Since changes in index scores
are highly correlated with economic growth rates, the modest
rebound for the U.S. raises hopes
that the economy can regain some
of the momentum lost through
the excessive spending, taxes and
regulations of the Obama era. The
2010 elections, which returned
control of the House of Representatives to Republicans, brought
some restraint in government
excess, a fact reflected in the U.S.
economic freedom trend and the
Economic freedom has proven
to be an important predictor of
economic and social success
around the world. Countries with
higher levels of economic freedom
are much richer than lower-scoring countries. Per capita incomes
in the freest countries are six to
seven times higher than incomes
in the least free countries. Betterscoring countries in the index
enjoy lower rates of poverty,
better health care, and do a better
job of protecting the environment.
Overall, the Index of Economic
Freedom provides ample evidence
of the power of free markets to
contribute to increased prosperity
and human well-being. It is clear
that some policy makers, both in
the U.S. and abroad, have been
listening. Others have not, and
the world remains divided between those who have economic
freedom and those who do not.
Globally, economic freedom
continues to advance. This year’s
world-wide average score of 60.4
is the highest ever. Over 100
countries recorded advances in
economic freedom; 37, including
Taiwan, Lithuania, Georgia,
Colombia and Israel, achieved
The seven years’ slide has
stopped, thanks to some
restraint in the growth
of government spending.
recent uptick in U.S. economic
activity. The 2014 election promises even greater restraint in the
growth of government spending
and regulation.
Conservatives and libertarians
should be happy that divided government in Washington has
slowed the growth of government
spending. But political change has
yet to reduce government favoritism and cronyism, or the costs
and uncertainty generated by
ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank regulations, all of which retard investment and job growth.
their highest scores ever.
Competition at the top of the
rankings is as close as it has ever
been, with top-ranked Hong Kong
edging out Singapore by only
two-tenths of a point. New Zealand, Australia and Switzerland
also gained the coveted “free”
ranking. North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Eritrea
remain stuck at the other end of
the scale as the five least-free
economies in the world.
At the heart of the free-market
system is the idea of maximizing
opportunities for individuals to
organize and compete in the production of goods and services to
increase efficiency and productivity. The Index of Economic Freedom provides one measure of how
well governments are doing in
providing an environment in
which such entrepreneurship can
flourish.
This year’s results give cause
for hope, both in the U.S. and
elsewhere, but show that the task
is far from complete.
Mr. Miller is director of the
Center for Trade and Economics
at the Heritage Foundation.
Liberals’ criticism of my
SEAL teammate Chris
Kyle has had the ironic
effect of honoring him.
The bulk of Chris Kyle’s remarkable exploits took place in the Al
Anbar province of Iraq in the summer of 2006. He and I were teammates at SEAL Team Three. Chris
had always been a large figure in
the SEAL teams. He became a
legend before our eyes in Ramadi.
My fellow special-operations
brothers might be shocked, but I
think the comments by Messrs.
Rogen and Moore have had the
ironic effect of honoring Chris
Kyle’s memory. They inadvertently
paid Chris a tribute that joins the
Texas funeral procession and
“American Sniper” book sales and
box office in testifying to the
power of his story. I’ll get to the
punch line shortly, but first please
let me lay the groundwork.
Composite
‘A
merican Sniper,” the new
movie about Navy SEAL
Chris Kyle, has opened to
staggering box-office success and
garnered multiple Academy
Award nominations. But not all
the attention has been positive.
The most vocal criticism came in
the form of disparaging quotes
and tweets from actor-director
Seth Rogen and documentarymaker Michael Moore. Both have
since attempted to qualify their
ugly comments, but similarly
nasty observations continue to
emanate from the left.
The very term “sniper” seems
to stir passionate reactions on the
left. The criticism misses the
fundamental value that snipers
add to the battlefield. Snipers
engage individual threats. Rarely,
if ever, do their actions cause
collateral damage. Snipers may be
the most humane of weapons in
the military arsenal. The job also
takes a huge emotional toll on the
man behind the scope. The intimate connection between the
shooter and the target can be hard
to overcome for even the most
emotionally mature warrior. The
value of a sniper in warfare is
beyond calculation.
I witnessed the exceptional
performance of SEAL, Army and
Marine snipers on the battlefields
of Iraq and Afghanistan. They
struck psychological fear in our
enemies and protected countless
lives. Chris Kyle and the sniper
teams I led made a habit of infiltrating dangerous areas of enemycontrolled ground, established
shooting positions and coordinated security for large conventional-unit movement.
More than half the time, the
snipers didn’t need to shoot; overwatch and guidance to the ground
troops was enough. But when
called upon, snipers like Chris Kyle
engaged enemy combatants and
“cleared the path” for exposed
troops to move effectively and
safely in their arduous ground
missions. These small sniper
teams pulled the trigger at their
own risk. If their position was discovered, they had little backup or
support.
As Navy SEALs, we have the
privilege of using the best hardware the military has to offer. We
have access to, and train with, the
Former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle in 2012 in Midlothian, Texas.
latest elite weapons. We operate
with the world’s finest aviators,
from multiple services, who transport us to and from targets and
protect us from above with devastating firepower. Advanced drone
platforms are at our disposal and
wreak havoc on our enemies. The
full complement of American
battlefield ingenuity and capacity
is at our disposal. Our enemies
the world over know this well.
They have experienced this awesome power and respect it.
But every U.S. fighting force
possesses a weapon that frightens
our enemies today more than any
of those above. The Taliban, al
Qaeda, Islamic State, jihadists everywhere—all those who oppose us
fear and hate this weapon, and are
haunted by its power to stop their
own twisted plans for the world.
What is this weapon? The First
Amendment to the Constitution of
the United States.
It was written long ago by
leaders of astonishing foresight
and courage. It is what men like
Chris Kyle fight and die for. It is
what I immediately think of when
someone burns a flag, shouts
some hateful remark during a
protest or criticizes the men and
women who have volunteered for
military service and willingly go
into harm’s way.
When Seth Rogen and Michael
Moore exercise this right, it is a
tribute to those who serve. While
I am revolted by their whiny, illinformed opinions about Chris
Kyle and “American Sniper,” I
delight in the knowledge that the
man they decry was a defender of
their liberty to do so.
Mr. Denver, a commander in
the U.S. Navy SEALs Reserves, is
the author of “Damn Few: Making
the Modern SEAL Warrior” (Hyperion, 2013).
Publishing: A Writer’s Memoir
By Gail Godwin
(Bloomsbury, 209 pages, $25)
‘I
have a disease,” the ambitious, young Gail
Godwin once wrote in her diary. “I want to be
everybody who is great.” More than 50 years
later, Ms. Godwin has written 14 novels, two story collections, three nonfiction books, 10 libretti (with her
late companion, the composer Robert Starer) and, now,
a chronicle of her life as a writer whose career has been
boosted and buffeted by the vagaries of the publishing
industry. She has made of it a suspenseful account, with
a degree of emotional depth, too.
Some of Ms. Godwin’s anecdotes will be familiar to
readers of her autobiographical essays and her two
published journals. She grew up in Asheville, N.C., for
years watching her divorced mother support the family
as a teacher,
reporter and
writer of pulp
fiction. Mother
and daughter
wrote short stories
together, sometimes the same one
from different
points of view. But
along the way,
Kathleen Godwin
Cole, as she came to
be known after she
remarried, suffered
many rejections of
her work. Three
novels and a play
were summarily
turned down. She
tried to make a joke out of
rejection, but clearly her daughter
felt her mother’s disappointment to the
core. Reading “Publishing: A Writer’s Memoir,” it
sometimes seems as if Ms. Godwin’s life task has been
to fulfill her mother’s thwarted dreams.
Ms. Godwin majored in journalism at the University
of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, writing fiction on the
side. When a scout from Knopf came to campus looking
for young talent, the hopeful Gail lined up with other
students. The man’s wife read submissions behind a
screen—presumably to give students privacy when their
work was rejected. “This isn’t right for us,” she told
Gail.
But the need to write grew in Ms. Godwin “like a
beast.” For a while, she was a reporter for the Miami
Herald. She had a bad marriage, moved to London and
had another bad marriage. Still determined to write,
she enrolled at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She also
got a Ph.D. in English. If she couldn’t be a writer, she
reasoned, she could teach.
Part of being a writer is the constant effort
to find talented confederates within an
unstable, commercially driven industry.
By 30, Ms. Godwin had written at least two unpublished
novels. But she had a certain “pigheadedness,” she says.
And she was fatalistic. “We were all going to vanish,
every last one of us, published or unpublished, back into
the night from whence we came.” So she continued, as
she puts it, “marching to the beat of a doomed
language.” At last, on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 1968—of course
she remembers the exact date—Harper & Row accepted a
novel she had written, which became “The
Perfectionists” (1970), based on her unhappy second
marriage and her struggle to escape the domestic coil.
Her editor moved to Knopf and took her with him.
(Apparently her work was at last “right” for the
publishing house.) They made their first lunch date, but
the editor dropped dead. Ms. Godwin landed with the
esteemed editor Robert Gottlieb, whom she credits with
making her cut bad passages from her work. One
example: a character sunbathing naked next to a
sleeping snake.
Eventually, though, she left Mr. Gottlieb. The parting
seems friendly: He saw her as a literary writer; she
wanted more money. She found another editor with
whom she did have lunch, Alan Williams, at Viking, who
published “A Mother and Two Daughters” (1982). It was
her first best seller. Like many Godwin novels, it
centered on women negotiating the twin poles of
tradition and the changing nature of their possibilities.
People now bid wildly for Ms. Godwin’s books. Her
mother lived long enough to see her daughter win both
critical praise and financial success, and Ms. Godwin
eventually earned enough money to buy her mother a
condominium. In 1983, Viking’s president was fired by
the head of its corporate parent, and Ms. Godwin
worried that she might soon lose her editor, who was
then reading the manuscript of her sixth novel, “The
Finishing School.” He resigned before it was published.
It became clear to Ms. Godwin that the publishing
industry was changing. It was becoming a business—or
no longer the “literate, gentlemanly occupation” it had
always pretended to be. The era of consolidation had
begun. For various reasons, a kind of fear crept into Ms.
Godwin’s writing—she began second-guessing herself,
making cuts at her publisher’s behest in her novel“Father Melancholy’s Daughter” (1991), for instance. Then
the president of her new publishing house, Ballantine,
was fired. Ms. Godwin started some books she couldn’t
finish and received some bad reviews. She was shepherded through this period of ordeal by her savior of an
agent, John Hawkins (who died in 2011, age 72).
Part of being a writer, “Publishing” implies, is the
constant effort to find talented confederates within an
unstable, commercially driven industry. The success of
the effort, it is clear, can be as fugitive and uncertain as
the success of a novel or memoir. In many respects, Ms.
Godwin, for all her travails, has been luckier than many
writers who never manage to find happiness with an
agent, editor or publisher.
“Publishing” ends with the perfect book party, at the
Washington, D.C., home of Jim Lehrer, the former host
of PBS’s “NewsHour.” The house is cozy, softly lighted.
There is a library brimming with books. Ms. Godwin is
surrounded by friends. The event seems to be the
culmination of years of false starts and shifting
alliances, of picking oneself up after disappointment
and beginning again. Ms. Godwin, now in her 78th year,
is clearly at peace with herself. “One day,” she writes,
“like the millions of writers before me, I would leave
behind an empty desk; however, I would also leave behind a row of books.”
Ms. Smith is a novelist and former cultural reporter
for the New York Times.
P2JW027000-0-A00900-1--------XA
By Rorke Denver
AP Photo/The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Paul Moseley
The United States of ‘American Sniper’
The Prose Was
The Easy Part
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