E T T E R S A dinosaur in the ethics department? I write as one who has grown skeptical of literary publications and magazines. I have seen too many editors start doing “buyer’s sections” for their advertisers that sooner or later slip into so-called editorial. I’ve seen too much bad design masquerading as high art. I have read one too many short stories about short-story writers taking a short-story writing seminar. I have watched too many talented friends put their career ahead of how their talents could serve their community. Even the Atlantic Monthly gave L.A. a shameless glow-job a couple of months ago...I was beginning to think maybe I was some kind of a dinosaur in the ethics department. Then I picked up a copy of CSQ and read it cover-to-cover, something I haven’t done with a publication since they stopped handing out Weekly Readers in elementary school. I xeroxed “The Way it’s Supposed to Be” for three of my friends; I missed my husband’s entrance after work I was so engrossed in “Buntu and I.” “Paralyzed for Life” was a stitch! I didn’t agree with every comma or illustration selection, but your hearts are in the right place—=and though that sounds like a cliche, I mean these words with the fullest resonance I can give them. That’s all the praise and as many exclamation marks as I can put in one letter without getting a little anu- scous. Do keep up the good work. When I win the Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes I’ll donate it all to you. Margaret Lynn Brown Duluth I thought we graduated Regarding the Spring 1988 article on free trade by David Morris on page 28, I have a few comments. First of all, did he take an economics class, or is it based on his feelings? Throughout the entire article he gave no proof for his thesis statement, which was that free trade is a great destroyer. He failed to define his terms, therefore his proof was based on ambiguity and couldn’t be argued with. Free trade, according to Webster’s, means “trade conducted without protective tariffs, quotas, etc.” This means no government intervention. Instead of giving us a definition, Mr. Morris provides us with a list of so-called “postulates.” Where does he get the assumption that “the highest good is to shop.”? A man who saves his earned money to build new factories depends on an ongoing process of production, and money which is lent to others is called investment capital, which represents goods he hasn’t consumed. The investments help a promising beginner start his productions in exchange for the payment of interest. If his venture is successful the producer pays the interest, the profits, which the investor enabled him to make. Consumption is the dead end of production, the worker is not investing in future production but is living like a parasite. Mr. Morris keeps referring back to government interventions which are not part of free trade (according to definition), and calls them free trade, our destroyers. What he is actually pointing out is that increase in government intervention is our downfall. I agree that the Undersecretary of the Treasury proposing to create 5 to 10 giant U.S. bankswill create a monopoly and destroy the economy, however, this government intervention is totally opposite from the definition of free trade. In a truly free-market economy (if Mr. Morris had taken economics he would have known this), businesses are small, independent pricetakers. They try to sell products of the best possible quality for the lowest possible price. Mr. Morris says that free trade destroys community relationships. How would a small businessman do if he had no sense of how to maintain friendly relationships with people? In a free market, his business would go elsewhere because people would have many choices. People hire people who have their shared values in mind. Today, in America, we do not have a truly free market. It is influenced by the government, corporations who get huge tax breaks, and small businesses who get taxed, inspected, and controlled to death. Mr. Morris complains that free trade would destroy “self-reliance and embrace dependence. That we abandon our capacity to produce many items and concentrate only on a few. That we import what we need and export what we produce.” Why would we have to be dependent? His assumptions is only true if we are forced at gunpoint to submit. Free trade has little to do with guns; if we’re not happy with the service we can start our own businesses or find someone who has what we want. Mr. Morris is very observant to point out that in Taiwan strikes are illegal, that in South Korea unions are only organized with government permission, and that South Africa virtually uses slave labor. Yes, those are not free countries, it is an exampfe of the destructive power of the government. Every argument Mr. Morris goes on with is directly against government intervention, not free trade, as he calls it. Government subsidies have not helped the market, he says on page 30. He says, and I agree, they actually cost consumers more in the long run, that is why I say free trade, free of tariffs, is more economical. The only times humans have advanced and benefitted instead of starving and dying are during times of free market economies. A big example of this is the United States in the late 1700s and on. As history will show, the more inventions and more food there was the less power government was exerting. For instance, ever since the war on poverty the government declared, there has been an increase in poverty. My mother didn’t have to go to work because my father made enough money to support the entire family. It could have been vice- versa, the mother making enough to support the whole family. However, today both parents of a family work unless they are already wealthy, they have no choice, because there is less and less money due to the government destroying wealth. If you choose not to believe me, then read David Morris’s article. It says on page 31, “If present trends continue we may have less leisure time in the 1900s than in the 1790s.” Why is that? It is not because of free trade, he has cause and effect mixed up. It is because of the government destroying producers. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, life expectency has increased every year. Before the Industrial Revolution the average life expectency of people was only 35 years. Today people are living longer. Diseases like polio and dying in childbirth are very rare, but they were common before people had money to find cures, before free trade. In the first few years of the United States and in the drafting of the Constitution, most men were new at the idea of having a free country and didn’t predict all the mistakes they could make. The worst thing to do is to toss away the best thing that ever happened to a country because it isn’t exactly perfect. The alternative David Morris offers to free trade could not be possible unless people were forced by guns to obey. I suggest further study of Austrian economics. I enjoyed reading the article. Carolyn Kelsey Roseville, MN Response to Carolyn Kelsey: Ms. Kelsey’s halcyon memories of yesteryear are touching, but inaccurate. The most rapid economic growth in U.S. history occurred behind the steepest protective tariffs. Which also inspired the modern miracles of South Korea and Japan. Internal competition and external protection are the historical ingredients for successful development. Ms. Kelsey makes the mistake of many rabid free enterprise boosters by confusing an argument against planetary trade with one against free markets. Nevertheless this cult plays an important role for they are often willing to carry their principles to their own logical absurdity. Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, for ex- ample, recommended unlimited migration to “improve economic efficiency,” citing the philosophical inconsistency that allows a Minnesota corporation to move to Mexico to pursue cheap labor while prohibiting cheap Mexican laborers from moving to Minnesota. And what about the military? Does anyone question that the Japanese could operate our military cheaper than we? Ms. Kelsey argues that really “free” free trade is possible only if the government gets out of the way. I half agree. Most public spending goes to reduce the cost of trade. When the Army Corps of Engineers dredges the Mississippi do you think the consumer pays the cost? The military maintains long distribution lines. Railroads were given free land. The car’s true costs are 4 to 5 times the taxes we pay for gasoline. Etc. Add in the environmental and social costs inherent in long distribution systems and we would probably find that in a truly free market self- sufficiency competitive with the planetary economy in almost all cases. We spend enormous sums to subsidize planetary trade, a trade which by its very nature undermines our ability to control our own futures. In return for losing our sovereignty we hope for lower prices. Any such benefits are more often the result of sleight-of-hand accounting tricks than improved production efficiencies. But what if we did save a few dollars a year? I write these words a few hours before the fireworks mark our July 4th celebration. More than 200 years after our ancestors fought a bloody war for the right to control their own destiny what value do we put on independence? David Morris Hero’s Journey Welcome to the Twin Cities community. And convey to Kate Hunt how I appreciated numbering your new magazine among my Found Objects. I liked both her heroic journey and merged assemblages. The Hero’s Journey she articulated, speaks of the individual responsibility each has to ourselves. It is a wonderful, and dreadful, adventure in which our aloneness can become our “inability to affect circumstances and surroundings.” Its dreaded sound is that “silence of unresolved frustration” to which she give visual form. Yet her sculptural journey demonstrates the therapeutic value of community. She merges memories and connections, assembles found objects with traditional materials... bringing together, giving form also to community. The Arts can enhance both individual journeys and cooperative destinations, and I welcome CSQ to reflect the viewpoint. Brian Karlsson-Barnes Minneapolis Arts Commissioner We took the class What a great idea for a mag and what a great issue: the one I have is Vol 10 No. 1. I don’t feel very clear about whether this magazine is a Minnesota magazine or one fourth of another mag syndicate, exactly—but whatever you have it is a great idea and I am grateful to Olivia Lundeen for her incredible insights — immensely helpful. Anyway—what a great idea—to put literature and social-change-wakefulness together. I have just finished teaching a quarter course at Minnesota called Reading as writers: The Short Story— and for a final quiz of sorts, asked people in the class to write what they thought American fiction ought to be in the next 10 years. Our idea was, why should it necessarily just absent- heartedly go on being either chill loser-stories like Ann Beattie’s work or cruel-male-macho-validationstories like Robert Couver's — wouldn’t it be a good idea to decide— like people who can make choices— what fiction should be. Anyway, they wrote ideas that sound so much like your idea—to tie social justice into literature. I am having their answers printed up to be saved. Carol Bly Sturgeon Lake, MN The results of an all-nighter I was walking up North Third Street tonight to meet Jim Sitter. I assumed that he would be somewhere in the offices of the Minnesota Center for Book Arts stroking his Macintosh. But Sitter was sitting on the front stoop. He was reading the first issue of CSQ/Twin Cities. Sitter and I proceeded to the Cafe del Arte to talk MCBA business, the future of publishing in our region, and on and on while I powered down two cafe au lait. I ordered a third to go and returned to my office to face a writing overload and the presence of my son The Mighty Max who turns 16 tomorrow and who has a term paper due and we are together planning an all-nighter. He is writing a piece on the destruction of the rain forests and what he has learned I will not tell you lest you instantly begin to gasp for oxygen. Meantime I was buzzed up and I opened your rag. The writing is wonderful. I am not done but here’s a quick impression. I loved Julie Landsman's piece. She writes wonderfully. But George McKenna’s piece ate me alive. So much good sense, hard-won reality, perspective, wisdom and passion. I have not felt so hopeful about public education since reading, yes The Way It’s Suppose To Be 20 years ago. Was that George Dennison? Actually my faith had been re-sparked earlier this year by participating for an hour a week in my daughters kindergarten class. Just as McKenna advocates, the presence of a parent both helps kids with instruction and role models and helps the parents understand and appreciate the school. Every week I see what a talented teacher can do with an ‘‘impossible” situation. McKenna’s piece is worth the subscription. Not to mention that I have glanced at David Morris’ article and it seems wonderfully provocative as well. I look forward to the rest of this issue. Not to mention the next one. Count me a charter subscriber. James P. Lenfestey Minneapolis 2 Clinton St. Quarterly—Summer, 1988
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