Jeremy Rifkin has a new book out praising the "European dream" and castigating the American dream. The Washington Post recently published a lengthy op ed based on this book which has been reprinted or excerpted by other papers. The Wharton School (where Rifkin sometimes teaches) published a lengthy review.

What doesn't Rifkin like about the American dream? It "made the individual the master of his (sic) fate" whereas Europeans recognize that this "no longer works" in "an increasingly interdependent world." The European dream has "humbled" American companies (but his examples are all based on government regulatory actions, not on competition with European companies).

Rifkin cheers Europeans for letting Foucault's "social interdependence" replace Locke's ideas of personal freedom and property rights. "Europeans find freedom not in autonomy, but in embeddedness," says Rifkin. "For most Europeans, the community's quality of life is more important than individual financial success."

"Where the American Dream emphasizes economic growth, the European Dream focuses on sustainable development," claims Rifkin. What Rifkin doesn't say is that the American dream is driven by the private sector, while his European dream is driven by government.

Do Europeans really want to pay high fuel taxes, get around on mass transit, and live in cramped homes crowded in dense neighborhoods? If you judge by government actions, the answer is "yes." But if you judge by private actions, the answer is "no." European driving is growing faster than driving in the U.S. Their suburbs are growing and, according to Sir Peter Hall, they are indistinguishable from those in America. European central city populations are declining and transit ridership is stagnant.

When the Berlin Wall fell and Germany reunified, the first thing many East Germans did was use their new West German Deutchmarks to buy cars. While Rifkin wants America to become more like Europe, the fact is that Europeans, whether they admit it or not, are becoming more like Americans.

Rifkin's criticisms of the American dream -- the large numbers of people in prison, high health care costs, and growing income disparity between rich and poor -- are arguably the result not of private action but of government action. By measures too numerous to mention, Americans are much better off than most of their European cousins.

The real difference between Europe and America, if there is one deciding difference, is that our government separates the executive from the legislative branches while European governments do not. This makes European countries less democracies than serial dictatorships, with the result that average Europeans have little say in the policies imposed by their governments.

America will be able to achieve Rifkin's European dream only by draconian government actions -- actions of the sort used by Oregon land-use planners, who forbid landowners in 95 percent of the state to build a house on their own land while they mandate landowners in 1 percent of the state to develop their land to higher-than-marketable densities. Fortunately, in passing a property-rights ballot measure, Oregon voters have negated those plans. So Rifkin's dream will succeed only if Rifkin and the other dreamers find a way to overthrow democracy.

Instead of circumventing democratic choice, people like Rifkin need to recognize that individuals will act like individuals no matter how interdependent the society. As Adam Smith realized 229 years ago, society only works if its institutions are designed so that, as individuals act like individuals, they also work for the benefit of other people. The American dream works because people can get rich mainly if they do things that help others. The European dream won't work if it denies people such opportunities.