Jimmy Carter was perhaps the most successful ex-president in American history, winning the <\/span>Nobel Peace Prize in 2002<\/span><\/a> for his work promoting human rights and economic and social development.<\/span><\/p>\n

But his single term as president (1977\u20131981) is largely remembered as a series of failures and missteps, sometimes literally. <\/span>Gas lines<\/a>, a record-high combination of unemployment and inflation on<\/span>\u00a0the “<\/span>misery index<\/span><\/a>,” and Americans being held hostage<\/a> by Iranian revolutionaries for over a year all fueled the perception that Carter was a weak and ineffective leader.\u00a0<\/span>When he<\/span> collapsed during a six-mile run<\/span><\/a>, it personified for many the exhaustion of the country under his leadership.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there was at least one way in which Carter excelled as president. He was, in the words of 2002 Nobel\u2013winning economist Vernon Smith<\/a>, the great deregulator. Carter forced the airline industry, along with interstate trucking and freight rail, to compete for business, with powerful and positive effects that continue to this day.<\/span><\/p>\n

I talked to Smith about Carter, whom he met at a White House event for American Nobel Prize winners, and what it was like to fly in the days when the government controlled air travel.<\/span><\/p>\n

The post Jimmy Carter, 'The Great Deregulator,' 1924\u20132024<\/a> appeared first on Reason.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nobel-winning economist Vernon Smith says the 39th president radically improved air travel, freight rail, and trucking in ways that still benefit us immensely. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-109560","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-policy","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}