Defending the Free Market: Critical Analysis Defending the Free Market written by Rev. Robert Sirico is a book about how being a leftist seems like a very moral and right thing to do for people but in turn is not very economically sound. He talks about how back in his younger days he was a socialist and leftist but in turn with many talks with people and intense fact searching he figured out how the free-market system is the only way to solve many of the world’s problems.
What I thought was Sirico’s strong points about the book was that he applied religion to a lot of the things he had to say. Usually when someone is talking about economics they try to shy away from including religion into their speech or paper. Also, Sirico was very blunt about what he had to say. He went straight to the point backing his ideas with personal experience and facts. When it comes to Sirico’s weaknesses I could not find anything. He was very direct in what he said and I believe he did not leave anything out. When I first began to read this book I thought that it was going to be a dull strung-out economic lesson as if a robot had written the book. Within the first few pages I was quickly proved wrong when Sirico started to add personal background and experience. He did this throughout the book, which made it actually interesting to read. One of the points Sirico mentioned really caught my eye. In Ch. 4, Want to help the poor? Start a business, he talks about how foreign aid does not help out a country. What seems to be a good hearted thing to donate food to other countries that are less fortunate in turn only hurts them. “Haiti’s rice farmers, for instance have been decimated by subsidized U.S. rice dumped on the country as free aid…it’s a disaster for farmers in developing countries who find themselves having to compete against free goods.”(Sirico 56). Another good example of this is when he talks about when he was working at a soup kitchen with his friends and he saw a large influx of people coming to get free soup and how he saw a business down the street suffering from the soup kitchen. “…after we cleaned up we decided to visit a fish-n-chips shop in the neighborhood…as we sat down with our drinks awaiting our meal, a thought crossed my mind that frightened me…their business required monthly payments for the rent, the lights, the food, water bills, heating bills, insurance, taxes, wages the list could go on and on.(Sirico 46-47). Sirico then goes on to talk about how they were the families’ competitors with distinct advantage because they have neither risk nor bills. This goes to show how free offerings may seem like a good idea yet is not economically sound. Sirico makes another great point at the beginning of Ch. 2 about how you cannot have freedom without a free economy. He says “If men and women aren’t secure in the right to property- not just to consume things, but to create with them and even to accumulate them-then they’re not secure in their human rights…every scheme of redistribution that has defied the right to private property has created more poverty.”(Sirico 25). What he is trying to say is when people are stripped of their personal belongings like speech, physical property, or money people get stripped of their basic livelihood. For example of equality- If an 18 wheeler truck was took from a truck driver and was given to someone less fortunate without a truck, the truck driver has been stripped of his livelihood.