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THE ADVENTURES OF JONATHAN GULLIBLE
A FREE MARKET ODYSSEY
The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey is a humorous fable about a young boy in a sailboat who is driven by a storm and shipwrecked on a remote Pacific Island. While marooned, Jonathan encounters people who explain the strange (statist) customs of the island.
A multitude of issues are covered, including: prohibiting inventions, protectionism, farm subsidies, the tragedy of the commons, property regulations and takings, taxes, inflation, unions, political bribery, occupational licensing, government monopoly, market alternatives to government services, government funding of the arts, special-interest lobbying, tax collection, efficiency, government franchises, government education, property rights, varieties of government, forecasting, paying people not to produce, bureaucracy, elections and voting, contradictions between school and the market, labor laws, social security, patents, liability, vice and drugs, responsibility and virtue, unemployment compensation, rent controls, building codes, zoning, majority rule, and self rule.
The book ends with chapter questions and a general statement of philosophy which usually generates plenty of excited discussion over the issues. Finally, some other free-market books and organizations are listed for those who want to look further into the free market.
Humble Beginnings On Radio
The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey began not as a book, but as a series of radio skits. The author, professor Ken Schoolland, reminisces:
"In 1980 I was doing weekly radio commentaries on a Honolulu news station, KHVH. But straight commentary from an academic economist was too dry and no one really paid any attention. Having just browsed through some of Gulliver's Travels and The Little Prince, I thought I'd spice up these 90-second radio spots with a fantasy dialogue. The station had no objection and friends were willing to perform with me, so Jonathan Gullible was born.
"Instantly, listener response to the commentaries improved all over town! The ideas were provocative and outlandish, yet they drove home the hard-core free-market lessons of philosophers such as Frédéric Bastiat, Henry Hazlitt, Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, and Henry David Thoreau in a humorous way.
"Later, in Alaska, I enlisted a dozen friends as actors to produce the episodes as a dramatic series for KCAW and KABN. Again it was a hit in the community."
The book, an educational publication of Small Business Hawaii, evolved from these beginnings, and is now published in 24 languages with an additional 20 translations in progress. Jonathan Gullible has been dramatized and broadcast on four radio stations in two states, has a CD, a website, and a screenplay. In Kenya a play, "The Trial of Jonathan Gullible" is being created based on Jonathan's disagreement with socialist policies on the island. Most importantly, it has been very effective in teaching free-market principles to young people in classrooms, contests, and theatrical presentations all around the world.
A Shower Of Awards For Excellence
Ken Schoolland receives the first Leonard E. Read award for excellence in economic education from Mark Skousen, president of the Foundation for Economic Education (Las Vegas, Nevada -- May 3, 2002)
The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible has won education awards from several organizations, including the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), the Association of Private Enterprise Educators, and Students in Free Enterprise.
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"It certainly presents basic economic principles in a very simple and intelligible form. It is an imaginative and very useful piece of work."
Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate in economics
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Check Out The Jonathan Gullible Website
A beautiful Jonathan Gullible website was assembled in 2001 by webmaster Ginger Warbis (with special assistance from ISIL member Susan
Wells). The site http://www.jonathangullible.com includes links to all the international publishers.
About The Author
Ken Schoolland is presently an associate professor of economics and political science at Hawaii Pacific University. Prior to that, he was the Director of the Master of Science in Japanese Business Studies program at Chansinade University of Honolulu and head of the Business and Economics Program at Hawaii Loa College.
Following his graduate studies at Georgetown University, he served as an international economist in the U.S. International Trade Commission, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and was on assignment to the White House, Office of the Special Representative for Trade Negotiations.
Schoolland left government for the field of education, teaching business and economics at Sheldon Jackson College in Alaska. He also taught at Hakodate University in Japan and wrote, "Shogun's Ghost: The Dark Side of Japanese Education," which has been published in English and in Japanese.
Schoolland is a member of the Board of Directors for the International Society for Individual Liberty and is a Sam Walton Fellow for Students in Free Enterprise.
Help Jonathan Gullible Spread Liberty
To The World
You can contribute to ISIL's Jonathan Gullible Book Fund and help bring the ideas of free markets to many more young people around the world. (Donations are tax-deductible in the USA.)
Translations are completed, but need funding for printing for the following countries: Bulgaria, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Romania, Russia -- and there are 16 others in the works. Help ISIL spread the word of liberty to the far corners of the earth.
To order your copy of the Adventures of Jonathan Gullible (English version) visit the ISIL Store. To make a special donation to the Jonathan Gullible Book Fund, click here.
For a November 2002 Jonathan Gullible
Progress Report, click here.
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