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01 Business Drives Freedom, Not Democracy - Jay Lillie
My guest today is Jay Lillie, international lawyer, author and speaker. Jay caught my attention with his ideas about developing freedom in oppressed countries through business. His thesis was that business creates freedom, not politics. Then Jay sent me a copy of his second novel Pacific Rebound, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Jay practiced with a large Wall Street law firm for many years as an international lawyer. He represented American companies in eastern and central Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. Over the years, Jay developed some ideas about business and freedom.Jay tell us how he represented an American pharmaceutical company in negotiations with the governments of Hungary and Czechoslovakia when those nations were still under the Russian thumb. He spent time behind the Iron Curtain, and got to know some very talented people well enough to see how much they envied the freedom hisclients had. In addition, he found time to take up writing. His first novel, Havana Passage Later, came about when he looked at Cuba and realized it was American law that was keeping us from doing the same there, Jay wrote essays and articles drawing the comparison to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It fell on deaf ears, so he put it in novel form – at least that was fun. That’s Havana Passage – Washington, Havana, and Miami, rather than Washington, Moscow, and Prague.