Harvard economics professor wonders about the Murdoch fuss

Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser writes in the New York Sun that the complaints lobbied about News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch‘s potential ownership of The Wall Street Journal are foreign to most of the business world.

Glaeser wrote,  “Perspicacious press pundits have proclaimed that Rupert Murdoch‘s possible purchase of the Wall Street Journal will lead to the destruction of that newspaper, a decline in unbiased reporting, and possibly the end of American democracy as we know it.

“The enemies of Mr. Murdoch seem to think that the market for ideas only works when its assets are owned by enlightened saints with an appropriately enlightened left of center worldview.

“What an odd idea. The markets for steel or coal or computers do not depend on the moral character of their capitalists. Adam Smith himself took a dim view of the ethics of businessmen but thought that competitive markets turn private peccadilloes into public virtues.

“The past two centuries of economic success have shown the power of competition among imperfect people to make our world wealthier, wiser, and more democratic.”

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