“How we ‘won’ in Vietnam, but are losing at home”: Glenn Reynolds

What is it John
Rambo said in First Blood? “Nothing is over!“

Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, revisits America’s engagement
with Vietnam and comes away thinking we lost the war, though not in
the way you think:

According to the Pew
Global Poll, 95% of people in Vietnam agree that most people
are better off under capitalism, even if there is inequality.

By contrast, only 70% of Americans believe the same thing.
(America is out-performed by such other less developed countries as
Nigeria, China, Turkey, Malaysia, the Philippines and India).
Maybe, quipped an
Internet commenter, the Vietnamese should send us some
advisers….

In his book, The
Rise and Decline of Nations, economist Mancur Olson
argues that established economies develop a web of special
interests that gradually chokes off economic growth.
Vietnam’s advantage is that its own parasites haven’t had a chance
to start spinning much of a web yet. Ours, on the other hand, have
been at it for decades.

Olson wrote that — as with the German and Japanese booms after
World War II — it takes a major calamity, such as
a war or a revolution, to cut through that web and allow economic
growth to take off again. I’ve argued
in the past that massive democratic change — a “wave”
election — might accomplish the same end.

Read the whole thing.

I’m not sanguine that this midterm will be a wave election. It
may well get a bunch of Republicans elected but it’s far from clear
that they are dedicated to free markets in any meaningful way (and
we know they tend to like “free minds” not at all). But the country
certainly needs to understand that it can’t take innovation and
rising living standards for granted. And if that’s a lesson we need
to learn from Vietnam, I got no problem with that as long as we
learn it and learn it fast.