(Another found document, this one from…I’m not sure. Maybe 1998 or 1999. Was I serious in writing this or was it a joke? I hope the latter but fear the former is closer to the truth. And don’t ask about the hyphenation.)
deconstructing free-market philosophy
There is an inherent fallacy in the means by which many in the free-market (libertarian, anti-intervention) movement justify their ends. Free-marketeers (as they will be called, for simplicity’s sake, not derision) despise government intervention, in the realm of business, personal affairs, consumerism, and other affairs of the individual or private institution. A difference is made, or assumed, between rules, which, by their structure, facilitate behavior (contract law, criminal law), and regulations (carbon dioxide limits, speed limits), which limit it. The latter, regulations, elicit, from the free-marketeers, the greatest scorn. Government intervention, say they, is detrimental: to business, to workers, to the consumer. They assert that people are informed about their own affairs, if not perfectly than to a greater extent than any higher-level entity (e.g., a government) could possibly be. Any attempt at regulation, then, is a form of reductionism: denying some number of singular entities options which they might otherwise have exercised. While regulation leaves unaffected those who never did or would choose the option-to-be-regulated, these people, even if the majority, never truly possessed a choice and are unaffected. For example, a regulation that Jews conduct services not on Friday but on Tuesday, would affect Christians and Muslims little, assuming that few of either group are likely to attend synagogue. Conversely, those who are affected, by right of their superior knowledge of their own affairs (in our example, the practice of Judaism), are necessarily infringed upon - denied a course of action (a product, a service, etc.) that, given their needs, wants, and knowledge of their own affairs, may well have been a reasonable, preferable, even logical, choice.
But, consider then the case in which the individual is un- or mis-informed. His misinformed-ness exists in terms of his society and the poor choices he makes can be addressed by the society. This could be accomplished actively via education (the transfer of new-to-him knowledge or the correction of incorrect knowledge) or passively (regarding the society, not the individual; this analysis must be from the point of view of the society) by example (”If the synagogue is empty on Tuesdays, perhaps I should try another day.”). Actively or passively, the society’s greater (wider, deeper, more ‘true’) knowledge is imparted to the individual, resolving his misconception.
Now broaden the above. Consider the case in which a group of individuals, a country’s worth, say, suffer a misconception, by necessity unknowingly. This misinformation may be of the workings of capitalist systems or of something more mundane: the belief that squash is a reasonable thing to eat. In this case, the public’s (i.e., the conglomeration of the individual’s) decisions would be rational given their context but irrational in a larger context. By analogy, a cargo cult. They might fail to recognize the inherent inequalities based upon class-structure (missing knowledge, including unintended consequences, the irrational union of the rational behavior of each) and allow the less-fortunately-born to be inescapably mired in poverty, filth, etc (misinformed action), or, in our less-charged example, fail to recognize the unpleasant taste and texture of squash and persist in adding it to soups, stews, sorbets, etc. In both cases, the knowledge of this failure of emic (insider) analysis, is based upon outside (etic) information, that is, information of origin outside the dominant discourse of the society in question. But, unlike the case in which an individual is misinformed, there exists no “super-society” to set right the misconception or even provide an example of “more-informed” behavior. Although cross-cultural similarities may be growing, there is, as of yet, no mediating “global culture;” just a loose consensus that congeals to address the most transgressive (and, particularly relevant: obvious) of affairs. There is also no guarantee that the society will stumble upon its error by chance. Even worse, the erroneous individual (remember, by societal standards) whose behavior was “corrected” was reset to this possibly-erroneous standard. Can there be any analogous accountability to a higher (above the society) structure?
It would seem that the only recourse would be to apply this knowledge obtained from cross-cultural and deconstructive analysis by means of intervention (”intervention” including also the dissemination of counter-culture knowledge). The government might, in our first example, institute some tax scheme to fund education, giving the poor an opportunity to overcome (at least somewhat) the meager right of their births. In the latter case, squash, a detestable fruit, might be banned or, at least, deprecated in public service announcements (”Just Say ‘No’”). In other words, government regulation can be undertaken when the public good (the corresponding change in action) of a regulation outweighs the private cost (fewer options; less ephemeral “freedom”) of the regulation.
But, the free-marketeers would claim that such intervention overrides the superior knowledge of the individual. They make no allowance, however, that an individual, indeed (especially) an entire culture, might simply be wrong concerning a host of issues and choices, due to lack of knowledge (treating viral infections by conjuring ancestors via shamans), wrong knowledge (asbestos is a great, low-risk insulator), or, most problematically, blinding cultural configuration, in which a defect in knowledge, and hence practice, can only be seen (perhaps “interpreted”) by the etic observer. An example of this latter inadequacy should be obvious from the pointed discussion above of unintended consequences. To assert that the public, if not all then a great many individuals, cannot be mislead, deceived, or simply ignorant, is to submit to mob rule (because the public is always ‘right’), in which the will of the public, or the majority of such, is the ultimate arbiter of knowledge, right and wrong, means of production and relations of production (A neat trick: think about this one; an entertaining logical discontinuity should present itself.), edibility and inedibility, etc.
Another neat trick: to not acknowledge the above analysis, to rely on the mob, undermines the free-marketeer’s own place in the scheme of society. By his existence, the free-marketeer is not representative of the majority - otherwise his position would be superfluous, and he would not be an agent of change, as he is now, but of maintenance, a conservative rather than a radical (and, by his own rhetoric, somehow engaged in the private sector rather than lobbying). So, seemingly by his own logic, this strange fellow should recognize his inherent ‘wrongness,’ the disjunction between his beliefs and those of the majority. For him to be an agent of change (an apt title given his aim to influence public policy and perceptions), he must acknowledge that individuals can be misled or ignorant, especially en masse. And, in this case, by this acknowledgement, the core assumption of his argument (that individuals’ knowledge, on the whole, overrides that of the larger institution) is seen to be irreconcilable with his conclusion (that the mob should, therefore, rule).
Surprisingly, though, the above does not ‘break’ the free-marketeer’s position. The above simply deconstructs and disqualifies a certain justification for the free market heard too-often by its proponents. The free-marketeer’s objectives demand a more nuanced explanation, taking into account human fallibility and the role of laws (rules and regulations) within a society. At the expense of some simplicity, this more-complex explanation will be able to avoid the simple, and ultimately false, idealizations (reductions, not just generalizations) that plague topical arguments for more-free markets (a hint: this change in nomenclature is necessary).
(in other words, forthcoming: “Reconstructing Free-Market Philosophy)
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