Free Markets Promote Unrest, Not Democracy

A recent U.N. report flies in the face of Washington's mantra that free markets are the only path to economic growth and democracy.

The Human Development Report 2002 warns that many countries that took steps toward democracy following the Cold War are either stalling or ''slipping back to authoritarian rule.'' The application of free-market nostrums in the developing world in fact has aggravated poverty. It has led to declining standards of living and widening income disparities. By the end of the 1990s, 52 countries wound up poorer than at the beginning of the decade, according to the report.

Despite this, Washington has long proposed that countries should first focus on economic growth and trust that lagging social indicators will follow. In a speech delivered last year to Latin American leaders alarmed at the Argentine implosion, President Bush insisted that ``nationals throughout our hemisphere need to strengthen our commitment to market-based reform, not weaken it.''

Today 211 million out of Latin America's population of 510 million live in poverty, with 86 million too poor to purchase even the most basic necessities. Seventy percent of those polled for the report in the region complain of increasing levels of poverty, crime, corruption, drug trafficking and addiction.

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