Ronald Bailey on Free Markets as Sustainable Development

Next week the United Nations is convening its Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro (Rio + 20). In advance of the meeting various activists and world leaders are asserting, "The current global development model is unsustainable," by which they mean free-market capitalism. Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey points out that history shows that before the advent of democratic capitalism most of humanity had experienced precious little development and no societies proved themselves sustainable in the long run. Free-market societies are both.