Lawrence Reed

Larry Reed
Born	(1953-09-29) September 29, 1953
Nationality	United States
Academic career
Field	Economics, Public Policy
Institution	Foundation for Economic Education
School or tradition	Austrian economics
Alma mater	Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania (M.A.) Grove City College (B.A.)
Influences	F.A. Hayek Ludwig von Mises Henry Hazlitt Fredric Bastiat
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

Lawrence W. (Larry) Reed (born September 29, 1953) is president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), headquartered in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, a position he has held since September 1, 2008. Before joining FEE, Reed served as president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Midland, Michigan based free-market think tank. To date, he remains Mackinac’s president emeritus.

Reed's interests in political and economic affairs have taken him as a freelance journalist to 78 countries on six continents since 1985.

Over the past twenty-five years, he has reported on hyperinflation in South America, black markets from behind the Iron Curtain, reforms and repression in China and Cambodia, and civil war inside Nicaragua and Mozambique. Additionally, he spent time with the Contra rebels during the Nicaraguan civil war; and lived for two weeks with Mozambique rebel forces at their bush headquarters in 1991, while the country was engaged at the height of their guerrilla conflict. Among many foreign experiences, Reed visited the ravaged nation of Cambodia in 1989 with his late friend, Academy Award winner Dr. Haing S. Ngor.

In 1986, while traveling with the Polish anti-communist underground, Reed was arrested and detained by border police.

An advocate for free market solutions to national and global issues, Reed has authored over 1,000 newspaper columns and articles, 200 radio commentaries, as well as dozens of articles in magazines and journals in the United States and abroad. His articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Baltimore Sun, Detroit News, Detroit Free Press and USA Today, among numerous others.

During a 2003 address on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressman Ron Paul paid tribute to Reed, acknowledging him as "one of America’s leading advocates for liberty", and remarked that Reed's writings "reflect his unswerving commitment to limited government and the free market as the best way to promote human happiness."

Personal life

Reed was born and raised in Pennsylvania, United States.

He has cited the 1968 event between the Czechs and the Soviets known as the "Prague Spring", as the genesis for his interest in liberty and freedom, and has referred to the Czech cause as a “flowering of liberty.” As a result of interactions with FEE in his teen years, Reed became exposed to the ideas of F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and others from the Austrian school of economics.

In 1982, he was the Republican candidate for U. S. Congress in Michigan’s 10th district.

Education and appointments

Reed holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Grove City College (1975) and a Master of Arts degree in History from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania (1978).

From 1977 to 1984 he taught economics at Midland, Michigan’s Northwood University, serving as chairman of the Department of Economics from 1982 to 1984. While at Northwood, Reed designed the university's dual major in Economics and Business Management and founded its annual "Freedom Seminar."

In addition to his undergraduate and graduate education, Reed was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Public Administration from Central Michigan University in 1994 and an honorary Doctorate of Laws from Northwood University in 2008. Reed is also the recipient of the Grove City College Distinguished Alumni Award.

Long active in Michigan policy, Reed was appointed in 1993 by the state's then-Governor John Engler(R) to the Headlee Amendment Blue Ribbon Commission. The Commission had been established as part of the state's 1978 "Headlee Amendment" for the purpose of limiting local and state government spending. It was officially abolished in 2004 by current Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm.

In 1994, Reed was named to the Secchia Commission on Total Quality Government, a task force charged by Governor Engler to streamline Michigan state government. Engler and many of his administration's officials frequently cited the work of the Mackinac Center as influential in shaping administration policies.

In December 2007, the Washington, D.C. based Heritage Foundation named Reed Visiting Senior Fellow.

Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Located in Midland, Michigan, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy became, during Reed’s tenure, the largest state-based free market think tank in America.

Foundation for Economic Education

On September 1, 2008, Larry Reed became president of the Foundation for Economic Education. The Foundation, founded in 1946 by Leonard Read, has widely been recognized as the first not-for-profit organization of its kind, familiarizing people with the issues of liberty. As Reed has put it, the organization is “Aimed at relative newcomers to the freedom philosophy”. It is FEE’s mission to provide people with the “economic and moral” foundations of a free and civil society. Under his guidance, FEE has expanded its website as well as its travel itinerary, becoming a more visible presence at freedom-centric functions and seminars in other states. As president, Reed hopes to reassert FEE’s position as a “mothership” for the freedom movement at large.

According to Reed, “FEE believes a free society is not only possible, it is imperative because there is no acceptable alternative for a civilized people. Our vision for the future is that through education, men and women will understand the moral, philosophic and economic principles that undergird a free society. They will appreciate the direct connection between those principles and their material and spiritual welfare. They will strive to pass those principles on from one generation to the next.”

Economic philosophy

Reed is a long time advocate for what is recognized as the Austrian School of economics. His prolific writing career, as well as his occupational affiliations, have been dedicated to advancing free societies via recognizable Austrian credos such as spontaneous order of pricing systems, voluntary contractual agreements, and limited government intervention in all aspects of life. Austrian economists champion free enterprise and competition,--something Reed has referred to as one of the highest and most beneficial forms of human cooperation-- and believe human interaction and the human condition are the true dictators of how societies are formed, and how they will perform.

Reed believes that, "Competition in the marketplace means nothing less than striving for excellence in the service of others for self-benefit. In other words, sellers cooperate with consumers by catering to their needs and preferences."

I’m an advocate of what is known as the Austrian school. Its most notable scholars were Ludwig von Mises and Nobel Laureate F. A. Hayek, who were born in Austria. Austrian economists (most of whom have never been to Austria, by the way; it’s just the name for a school of thought) start from the premise that “the economy” cannot be best studied as lumps of lifeless stuff you can express with equations. It is composed of living, breathing, decision-making entities called individuals. All economic phenomena can and should be traced back to how individuals perceive, think, act and interact. Austrians see competition and the entrepreneur as critical factors in economic growth. We appreciate the role of incentives and of free prices as natural market-clearing mechanisms. We suffer from no “pretense of knowledge” that would suggest any group of people with power could rationally plan an economy from the top down. We are rigorous in our analysis of money as an invention of the market and are constantly warning that when government takes charge of it, the door is wide open to business cycles and currency debasement. We also tend to be among the strongest defenders of private property; ultimately, everything has an owner and it’s only a question of whether the person to whom it really belongs owns it, or somebody else with a gun owns it. No school has all the answers, but I think it is ever more apparent with time that the Austrian school starts from the right premises, analyzes the economy with the proper tools and humility, and yields the most fruitful insights of any school of thought.

Seven principles

Reed is well known for his "Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy". He has stated that he believes these principles are the "pillars of a free economy", and believes their ability to guide society has been made manifest over the course of recorded history.

• 1) Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free.
• 2) What belongs to you, you tend to take care of; what belongs to no one or everyone tends to fall into disrepair.
• 3) Sound policy requires that we consider long-run effects and all people, not simply short-run effects and a few people.
• 4) If you encourage something, you get more of it; if you discourage something, you get less of it.
• 5) Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.
• 6) Government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody, and a government that's big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you've got.
• 7) Liberty makes all the difference in the world.

Author

Reed's most recent book is A Republic—If We Can Keep It, a collection of essays by Reed and historian Burton W. Folsom, Jr. that surveys the economic history of the United States and the modern world.

Another of Reed's recent books is Striking the Root: Essays on Liberty, a bundling of works previously published in FEE's magazine, The Freeman. The essays zero in on what Reed identifies as the chief root of many America's burdens: the failure of the its people to recognize that, in order to survive and have influence, governments must use force.

Reed's other books include Lessons from the Past: The Silver Panic of 1893, and Private Cures for Public Ills: The Promise of Privatization, both published by the Foundation for Economic Education, and When We Are Free, with Dale M. Haywood.

Published works and Interviews

Academic books (authored or coauthored)

• A Republic—If We Can Keep It ISBN 1-57246-031-8
• Striking the Root: Essays on Liberty ISBN 1-890624-72-1
• Lessons from the Past: The Silver Panic of 1893 ISBN 0-910614-90-3
• Private Cures for Public Ills: The Promise of Privatization ISBN 1-57246-019-9
• When We Are Free, with Dale M. Haywood ISBN 0-87359-045-7

Essays

• Great Myths of the Great Depression ASIN B001O8DYP0
  • Great Myths audio page

Interviews

Reed has consented to a number of interviews over the years including:

• Interview at The Imaginative Conservative by Bradley Birzer in February 2012
• Interview with Staff at The Daily Bell in January 2012
• Interview with Trent Hill at Young Americans for Liberty in 2011
• Interview with Israel Wayne at Biblical Worldview in 2011
• Interview with Strike-the-Root in 2002

Selected articles

• (2009) The Story of Nicholas Winton
• (2009) Rome and the Great Depression
• (2003) The True Meaning of Patriotism

See also

• Haing S. Ngor

External links

• Mackinac Center for Public Policy
• Foundation for Economic Education
• State Policy Network
• The Michigan Experiment Common Cause Magazine
• Just Good Frieds, Really Common Cause Magazine
• Paul Krugman Flunks Capital Theory The Freeman
• Part Two: Economic revolution throttles inventor