BASEDPolitics’ Hannah Cox writes, Bono’s “charitable work and activism has led to tens of billions in AIDS relief for African countries and the cancellation of debt for some of the world’s poorest nations. Given some of this work, along with his status as a member of Hollywood royalty, many might assume Bono holds left-of-center views like many of his peers. (And by left of center I mean, anti-free market, pro-big-government opinions.)

Yet Bono recently sat down for an interview with The New York Times to promote his forth-coming book, ‘Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.’ And in the interview, he dropped some pro-capitalism bombs that may surprise the casual observer.

In the conversation, the interviewer posed the question, ‘Maybe this is too much of straw-man argument, but it’s easy to imagine a young activist looking through the book and seeing praise for George W. Bush and Bill Clinton—not exactly beloved figures these days—and thinking you’re out of touch. Or reading a sentence like ‘Why is there hunger in a world of surplus?’ and wondering whether you ever asked that question to all the billionaires you write about glowingly. So do you give credence to shifting ideas about activism and change in the same way that you give credence to shifting ideas about the pop world?’

To which Bono responded, ‘I ended up as an activist in a very different place from where I started. I thought that if we just redistributed resources, then we could solve every problem. I now know that’s not true.’

‘There’s a funny moment when you realize that as an activist: The off-ramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce, it’s entrepreneurial capitalism,” Bono said.”

Read the entire column.

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FEE’s Tom Mullen writes, “The 20th century was a period of startling technological advancement. Compared to the lifestyle of average people in 1925, most of human history before that time amounted to what we’d now call ‘camping.’

There was a brief pause in America during the 1920s, but overseas the anti-capitalist mindset ran rampant. The consequences were disastrous. https://t.co/ftbn9Sck8x

— FEE (@feeonline) November 8, 2021

Just 30 years earlier, most people traveled on foot or by animal power, except when taking trains. They lit their homes with candles and provided themselves with heat mostly by burning wood, just as their prehistoric ancestors had. They went outside to use the bathroom. They died from diseases we brush off today with a 10-day regimen of pills.

The technological explosion in the early 20th century had its roots in the 19th, when what used to be called liberal values informed the Western world. By ‘liberal,’ I mean individual liberty, free markets, and limited government.”

Read the entire column.

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FEE’s Brad Polumbo writes, “Pope Francis recently made a statement on World Food Day that in effect blamed markets and capitalism for the persistence of world hunger.

‘The fight against hunger demands we overcome the cold logic of the market, which is greedily focused on mere economic profit and the reduction of food to a commodity, and strengthening the logic of solidarity,’ he tweeted.

With such a massive platform, the pope has an obligation to better inform himself before wading into economics affairs. https://t.co/nuFYR1u1rD

— FEE (@feeonline) October 20, 2021

‘We must adapt our socio-economic models so they have a human face, because many models have lost it,’ the pope continued. ‘Thinking about these situations, in God’s name I want to ask… The big food corporations to stop imposing monopolistic production and distribution structures that inflate prices and end up withholding bread from the hungry.’

In Pope Francis’s telling, the ‘cold logic of the market’ is the main barrier to eliminating world hunger. But this argument betrays a woeful misunderstanding of how markets operate and how past achievements in reducing global poverty have been achieved.”

Read the entire story.

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