Posted by
The Proud Liberal on Friday, August 28, 2009 12:58:49 PM
First, I would recommend that everyone read a book entitled "Disaster Capitalism" by Naomi Klein. Best book I've read in some time.
I think it's best to skip Levin's presentation of the Free Market entirely since he heads off in the wrong direction early in his chapter. The first thing to be noted about the free market is that it does not admit "equality" and "fairness" or "morality" to be conscious and prior choices of the people who participate in a free market. They are accounted for as "unintended consequences" of a free market. It should be noted that if conservatives are in favor of "liberty and freedom" they should have no problem with a segment of our population, even a majority of our population consciously choosing equality, fairness and morality and economic goals. We recognize that these goals are not consistent with the free market and will need to supersede the free market in terms of our choices, i.e., we choose equality and fairness above the free market.
It seems to me that the supporters of the free market view the free market in much the same way they view God and religion and seem to think, though perhaps they don't realize this themselves, that God made the free market as his favorite economic system. Thus, the free market system should never be challenged or changed because it is part of the Divine and created by Divine Providence. Just my observation. But this is supported by the Christian belief that man should not strive to make this world perfect, since that would be equivalent to a desire to be or replace God.
The next thing to consider is some mushiness on the conservative side in regard to man's inherent nature. The supporters of the free market rely on a "selfish human nature" as the driver of the free market to produce unintended consequences that turn out to be good. But conservatives view human nature over a spectrum, which includes "sinful" and "evil." See D'Souza for instance. Now I think there is a palpable difference between selfish and sinful and evil. The big question for conservatives is how do you have faith that human beings who are inherently, at least part, evil, can participate in an economic system and have that evil turn into public good. It boggles the mind.
The libertarian Tabor Machan solves this by denying that man's nature is, after all, not really so bad; but for the conservative there is a problem. Nevertheless cheaters and scammers and downright evil people are quite visible in our free market system, which I think vitiates the claim that the free market produces outcomes that are primarily good for everyone and so should be left alone.
In short, economics 101 free market theory is totally inadequate to depict how the free market operates in the real world full of individuals whose fundamental nature is base and evil.