Surry County needs jobs, but locating a new prison in Surry County is not in our best interest in the long term ("Officials lobbying state to choose Surry for prison," Dec. 18).
Surry County promotes tourism based on Mayberry, vineyards and the quality of life in our community. Building a state prison here would damage all of those positive aspects of our community and our economy. Property values near a prison would be damaged -- as would Surry's chances of attracting more desirable industry and jobs.
Everyone in the county would be exposed to an increased danger from escaped felons. Security issues have been downplayed, but escapes do occur during transportation, work release or from hospitals.
STEVE AND JUDY DRIVER
Mount Airy
Matter of degree
Jay Ambrose ("The end of talk about greed," Dec. 22) argues that criticism of greed during the current financial crisis is misdirected because economic self-interest is different from greed. Perhaps, but it is only a matter of degree.
Ambrose essentially restates Adam Smith's claim that an "invisible hand" harmonizes many self-interested actions to produce the public good. One way to state this is that motives don't matter much, because good results emerge anyway.
Unfortunately for Smith's modern disciples, motives do matter. Smith never revealed how real, fallible humans would keep too much of the "self" out of self-interest. And when the excess of self appears, Smith's magical "invisible hand" usually goes missing. Fraud, now making headlines, is only one of the results.
Allen Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, and a disciple of the self-interest-takes-care-of-everything school, recently recanted. Said he, his faith in "the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity" had been replaced by "shocked disbelief" as the system collapsed. His awakening was too late. As Fed chairman, Greenspan's faith in self-interest led to his failure to regulate institutions that were engaged in blatantly risky behavior.
If Greenspan had regulated more, we might have avoided the disaster that is upon us. The public good is too important to leave to "invisible hands" that are invisible because they aren't there when it matters.
DONALD E. FREY
PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY
Winston-Salem
Auto industry is failing
Let's take a long, hard look at why the auto industry is failing. It's not the big CEO paychecks. It's not even the influx of foreign manufacturers. It's not the unions. On the surface, any of these could be blamed, and Congress has blamed them.
The problem is larger and more difficult to solve than any of these issues. The problem is us. Toyota and Honda are outselling America throughout the world. They offer more reliable vehicles with better fuel economy. No brainer, right?
By bailing out the American Big Three, we are condoning second-rate manufacturing. What we need to do to jump-start our economy is to work like Americans. Build machines with pride that will outlast and out-perform anything built by Toyota or Honda.
This crisis will only be prolonged if we do not change our own expectations of craftsmanship.
MARK BURKS
Kernersville
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