Newsletter: AUGUST 2006

Greetings friends in FLOW,

Smile is an extremely heart-warming recent film about Operation Smile, a charity which takes teams of volunteers and medical experts to provide free facial reconstruction surgery to children in developing nations. The film follows the course of Lin, a Chinese child who was thrown away to die because of her deformity and who hides indoors through her teens, and Katie, a rich, indulged valley girl whose only difficult choice seems to be exactly when she will start having sex with her boyfriend. Katie's life is changed when she joins an Operation Smile team and meets Lin.

It is an inspiring and important story that rightly motivates people to support Operation Smile.

I also recently heard Bob Chitester acknowledge that he had played a role in changing history. Mart Laar, who at the age of thirty-two became Estonia's first prime minister after the fall of the Soviet Union, has said that when he came to power that he had only read one book on economics - Milton Friedman's Free to Choose. As a consequence, Estonia implemented the first flat tax and created the strongest of the transitional economies. Estonia has been one of the fastest growing of all European economies every year for the past five years. After Estonia initiated the flat tax, many of the former Soviet Republics imitated Estonia and likewise instituted a flat tax. The simple fact that Mart Laar read Free to Choose has profoundly change history - through Mart Laar it has done more to bring economic well-being to many transitional economies which might, instead, have fallen back into the chaos and authoritarianism of Russia. Healthy, open, strong economies around Russia might increase the probability that Russia someday becomes a free country. If we have peace and prosperity throughout the former Soviet Union, we can give Bob Chitester his share of credit.

The book Free to Choose was a spin-off from the PBS series "Free to Choose." The PBS series exists because one day in 1977 Bob Chitester, an unknown PBS station manager from Erie, PA, with long side burns and a leather jacket, knocked on the door of a Nobel laureate whose work he admired. The Friedmans graciously heard out Bob's crazy idea to create a documentary series on free market economics. Although Milton and Rose Friedman were both initially skeptical about the value of a documentary on freedom, Bob persisted and, to his delight, finally accepted his proposal whole-heartedly.

The rest, as they say, is history.

A one-point increase in a nation's Fraser Institute Economic Freedom ranking, if sustained for a period of five years or more, results (on average) to more than 1% more economic growth each year. An additional 1% of economic growth means, depending on the country, that millions, tens of millions, or hundreds of millions of people have better lives. It means that thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of children will not be sold into slavery. It means that thousands, or tens of thousands, more parents will be able to afford to pay for their child's reconstructive surgery.

Operation Smile is a profoundly good charity, and we encourage people to support their work. At the same time, it is important for people to realize that those charities that increase the rate of economic growth, by means of promoting economic freedom, are multiplying the positive effects a thousand-fold or more.

We celebrate the altruistic impulse that led William and Kathleen Magee to launch Operation Smile, and thus save thousands of children from the shame, humiliation, rejection, and death that their deformities might otherwise be their fates. And we also celebrate the altruism of Bob Chitester's leather jacket chutzpah that led him to knock on the door of a Nobel laureate and persuade him to make a documentary on free markets. As beautiful and compelling as the Magee's work is, we all need to find a way to tell the story of how much more compelling is the work of those thousands of altruists who are making the case for free markets around the world.

Smile,

Michael Strong
CEO & Chief Visionary Officer
FLOW, Inc.

Please contact us at contact@flowidealism.org with ideas, insights, and inspiration.

P.S. This month's Member Platform, by Yasuhiko Genku Kimura, founder of Vision in Action, is entitled Elegant Business Leadership .

P.P.S. Remember that FLOW is a non-profit organization that promotes economic freedom and broadly distributed prosperity. You can support FLOW through your financial contributions among other means.