In the 2009 Economic Freedom of the World Report, Chile is now #5, one place ahead of the United States.

In 1975, of 72 countries, Chile was No 71. How did this happen? The explanation lies in what I call the “Chilean Revolution,” because it was as important and transformative to my country as the celebrated American Revolution that gave birth to the United States.

The exceptional political circumstances of this period have obscured the fact that from 1975 to 1989 a true revolution took place in Chile, involving a radical, comprehensive, and sustained move toward economic and political freedom (from a starting point where there was neither one nor the other). This revolution not only doubled Chile’s historic rate of economic growth (to an average of 7% a year, 84-98),  drastically reduced poverty (from 45% to 15%), and introduced several radical libertarian reforms that set the country on a path toward rapid development; but it also brought democracy, restored limited government, and established the rule of law.

In 1998, The Los Angeles Times described the importance of the Chilean Revolution to the world:

In a sense, it all began in Chile. In the early 1970s, Chile was one of the first economies in the developing world to test such concepts as deregulation of industries, privatization of state companies, freeing of prices from government control, and opening of the home market to imports. In 1981, Chile privatized its social-security system. Many of those ideas ultimately spread throughout Latin America and to the rest of the world. They are behind the reformation of Eastern Europe and the states of the former Soviet Union today… which demonstrates, once again, the awesome power of ideas.

The role and achievements of Chile’s team of classical liberal economists is well known. They were the ones who in 1975, once the quasi-civil war was over, decided to carry out a principled, “friendly takeover” of the military government that had arisen from the breakdown of democracy in 1973 (here is my essay, published in “Society”, on that drama). Much less well-known, however, is that they were also the foremost proponents of a gradual and constitutional return to a limited democracy.

In fact, on August 8, 1980, a new Constitution, containing both a bill of rights and a timeline for the restoration of full political freedom, was proposed and approved in a referendum. In the period 1981-1989, what Fareed Zakaria has called the “institutions of liberty” were created—an  independent Central Bank, a Constitutional Court, private television and universities, voting registration laws, etc—since they were crucial for having not only elections but a democracy at the service of freedom. Then on March 11, 1990, an extraordinary event happened: the governing military Junta surrendered its power to a democratically elected government in strict accordance to the 1980 Constitution (here is my note on the restoration of democracy in Chile).

Since 1990, Chile has had four moderate center-left governments and, despite minor setbacks on tax, labor and regulation policies, the essence of the free-market reforms are still intact. The 1980 Constitution is the law of the land, and has been amended by consensual agreements among all parties represented in Congress. Not only is Chile now at the top of rankings on free trade (number 3 in the world after Hong Kong and Singapore) and transparency (less corruption that in most western European countries), but it is expected to be a developed country by 2018, the first in Latin America.

Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek proved, again, to have been a visionary when he stated in 1981: “Chile is now a great success. The world shall come to regard the recovery of Chile as one of the great economic miracles of our time.”

Via James Grimmelmann, the Washington Legal Foundation, a group known for its defense of property rights, filed an objection to the Google book deal earlier this month focusing on concerns related to those I raised in my posts earlier this week.

WLF points out that the Supreme Court has mandated that plaintiffs seeking to certify a class must make a diligent effort to notify all affected class members. According to the high court’s Shutts decision, this effort must include—at a minimum—sending a letter to every identifiable member of the class. In this case, this would mean sending a letter to every address in the US Copyright Office’s database of authors. WLF questions whether this was done; the foundation reports that it never received notification related to any of the books for which it holds the copyrights.

Now, it might be objected that this process would be prohibitively expensive. But if the class is so large that it’s impractical to notify all of its members, then the class is certainly too large to expect a judge to verify that the interests of all class members is being served by the settlement. If the class is too large to notify, then it’s too large to certify.

WLF also points out that the sprawling and heterogeneous class of plaintiffs makes it unlikely that the plaintiffs’ lawyers can fairly represent all parties who would be bound by the settlement:

For example, only those class members whose works have already been copied by Google are entitled to cash payments under the Settlement Agreement. Thus, the financial interests of those whose works have been copied diverge from the interests of class members whose works have not been copied. The former have an interest in maximizing cash payments, while the latter would prefer to see a smaller portion of the settlement pot allocated to those cash payments and a larger portion allocated to compensation for copying to be performed by Google in the future.

Another distinction among class members involves orphan works – that is, works whose owners are difficult (if not impossible) to ascertain. The owners of orphan works (who may not even know that they hold any ownership interests) have an obvious interest in ensuring that a large portion of settlement funds is dedicated to identifying the ownership of orphan works. On the other hand, the owners of works whose ownership is readily identifiable have an interest in holding down such search costs. If less money is devoted to such search efforts, a correspondingly greater percentage of settlement funds will be available to provide compensation
to them.

The point here isn’t that the amount allocated to orphan works searches is too high (or too low), or that more (or less) should be allocated to pay for previously-scanned books. The point is that a settlement involving millions of plaintiffs will inevitably enrich some plaintiffs at the expense of others. This isn’t a problem that can be solved by changing the details of the settlement. It’s a problem that can only be solved by limiting the scope of the settlement to parties whose interests are actually represented by the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

• Michael Tanner on the Obama health care speech: All sizzle, no substance.

• Why Main Street should embrace globalization. Plus, why international trade doesn’t cause unemployment at home.

• Should the IRS have the right to share your tax information with foreign governments? How about totalitarian ones? It may not be so far off.

• Libertarian news anchor John Stossel leaving ABC for Fox.

• Podcast- Obama: Hey, lets force everyone to have insurance, and fine Americans who don’t comply.