Ron Paul claimed on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on September 26th that market discipline is stricter than government discipline. This claim depends upon a number of institutions being set up wherein the true costs of production and consumption are actually being internalized by those doing the producing and consuming rather than being spread between hapless taxpayers as they currently are.
Now, Ron Paul definitely thinks these institutions should replace our current framework as one can see if one watches the extended interview. In it he elaborates upon his position regarding how he believes stronger property rights and a free market would serve environmental ends. The merit of this ecological argument will not be examined in this op-ed; however, this abstraction of the market needs to stop immediately.
We are “the market.” We are all “market forces.” We are the ones Ron Paul is proposing to have more power to discipline wrongdoers via torts, direct action, voting with our dollar and protest. Libertarians do not believe in delegating this authority away from ourselves as that act of concession will lead to regulatory capture and the centralization of power and economy. The market is absolutely not an external process we can afford to just sit back and watch transpire before us.
The “market” itself is conventionally viewed as a concept which symbolizes the aggregation of all acts of production and consumption committed under the institutions of private property and its subsequent division of labor and the price mechanism. When this process is unhindered by unwise barriers (government-enforced or market actor-endorsed) it generally allows for people to clear goods very successfully and to great material gain for all participants. However, the acts of producing and consuming in and of themselves have no moral content. All a free market means is that what is effectively demanded will be efficiently supplied, and if we demand garbage then we will have garbage. This freedom to choose connotes the responsibility to choose well or the world in which we might live may not be very much better than the one we have now.
Simone de Beauvoir writes astutely in The Ethics of Ambiguity, “… the present is not a potential past; it is the moment of choice and action; we can not avoid living it through a project; and there is no project which is purely contemplative since one always projects himself toward something, toward the future; to put oneself ‘outside’ is still a way of living the inescapable fact that one is inside; those French intellectuals who, in the name of history, poetry, or art, sought to rise above the drama of the [age of World War II], were willy-nilly its actors; more of less explicitly, they were playing the occupier’s game. Likewise, the Italian aesthete, occupied in caressing the marbles and bronzes of Florence, is playing a political role in the life of his country by his very inertia. One can not justify all that is by asserting that everything may equally be the object of contemplation, since man never contemplates: he does.”1
This freedom to choose is seen by most people with the same immobilizing terror which the existentialists rhapsodized upon. If we want our freedom to choose poorly, we must be wise enough to choose well. Faced with the responsibility to pay attention to the world around us and actually decide for ourselves what to support with our money and moral approval; with what to cherish and what to rally against for the sake of one’s principles, it is no real surprise that people generally favor delegating their role as a punishing or rewarding market force to someone with political power. “I have to think?! Get this terrible burden of responsibility away from me!”
Freedom is work, and there is no abstracting one’s self out of the market as if it were some independent process outside of ourselves that “will take care of everything.” The market is us. Push us toward a better world by demanding wisely if you can bear it, as anyone who would dare call themselves an adult should be prepared to do. Otherwise, we truly are not ready for the freedom Ron Paul and our American platitudes have prepared us for.
1. Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity (Citadel Press: New York, 1976), 76.
Awesome article, Ross. It's good to see more articles which emphasize free market principles *and* morality.
I hear that argument a lot (not only from most right-libertarians but also some on the libertarian left), that the only thing in which people who want to create a better society need to do is get the state out of the way and let "the free market" do its thing, which all goes along with the assumption that free markets in themselves (along with property rights and all that jazz) will magically solve everything. I don't think those conclusions necessarily follow from the premises, especially when those conclusions are extremely flakey and vague. Sure, we need to get rid of the state, end the Fed, all that, but we also need to be active in setting up alternative institutions which are horizontally-organized and which serve the community.
I guess that's one of the things I question about having such a market-driven society (I'm not against markets; I'm just pointing this out): would supply and demand in the market literally act as a de facto direct democracy to decide policies? For example, if 51% of a region's population decides they absolutely love and will continue buying from a company that does horrible things to workers and the environment, then that company will be able to remain in business and continue its policies (and it's even scarier, because usually when you're buying stuff from a company you're not really thinking about what kinds of practices it engages in or if you really want that company to stay in business in your community or if you even have perfect information about that company). I know this is a pretty vague example, but it's something we should be thinking about. Competition in the market, along with a market dominated with smaller businesses might solve this problem, but it's still a bit shaky. I'm sure there's a solution though.
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“This freedom to choose connotes the responsibility to choose well or the world in which we might live may not be very much better than the one we have now.”
This is true in a sense. But let’s take it a step further and say that this IS RIGHT NOW the very same world, one which is composed of an innumerable sum of individual human choices. What we have at present is, in fact, anarchy. It would be anarchy with a state or without one. People make decisions based on how they presume the outcomes of those decisions will affect them. Right now, the sum of those decisions equals the status quo, an aggressive ‘state’ being a piece of that status quo. Maybe one day we will live in a society where people perceive the outcomes of aggressive action as not being in their best-interest. Currently, if I can steal and get away with it, I will. If I can use the state to my benefit, I will. If you want to wait for everyone to be as “moral” as you or share your exact same system of ethics, then you will die waiting. The question, then, is this, “How will a society come about whereby any given individual, in pursuit of any given goal, would expect an action involving aggression to leave him worse-off than otherwise?”
Good post, though I'd venture that Paul is referring the difference in incentive structures between state and market, and as far as I can tell the latter is more efficient than the former regardless of how "wise" we are in terms of consumer choices or what have you.
Absolutely beautifully said!
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The US is collapsing all around us with no end in sight because we keep doing the wrong things to fix us. I'm switching parties to vote for Ron Paul. I voted for Barack the first time, but won't again.
[...] Kenyon wrote on C4SS this interesting piece called “The “Market” Doesn’t Disicpline, Ron Paul. We [...]
Something to ponder, Julia. Your question about the company that treats its workers poorly, but the public supports them by purchasing their products has a built-in assumption I don't think you intended. That assumption is that the world is static. You mentioned competition in the market, but did not seem to continue down that path of reasoning.
If it is public knowledge that a company treats workers poorly and that company has a successful product, there should (and I argue would) arise competing firms that would soak up their workforce, and produce a product just as marketable. The disaffected workers would be free to move to this new firm on promises of better treatment, higher wages, etc, and with them, they would take the knowledge and experience earned at Evil, Inc. Without the protection from competition that the State provides, companies should (and I argue would) fear this exact sort of situation.
I do not mean to imply that there is an abstract force called "the Market" that will do this. I mean profit-seeking entrepreneurs who see an opportunity will be the discipline that will punish this sort of behavior. I also don't mean to imply that the Market will know what it means to treat workers right, and so we should have a well worked out ethical and moral system in order to make proper judgments. But, what I do mean is that the profit-seeking motives within each of us is a more efficient and moral way of solving these problems than the State.
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[...] Article by Ross Kenyon. [...]
Beautiful, Ross!
Scott, I would never advocate statism as the answer to any problems which may arise in these scenarios. On the contrary, I'm agreeing with Ross that the answer is personal responsibility on our part along with setting the conditions in our society so that market institutions are designed so they create equality rather than profits (I know that's a pretty vague description).
The idea that workers would just be able to "leave", or that the community which is keeping that shady company alive by purchasing its commodities would instantly quit buying from it rests on these assumptions, that 1. people in the community would have perfect information about all the practices of all the businesses which they buy from; 2. that there would be enough people boycotting the company to have a large effect on its profits or enough people willing to take action against it; and 3. that the market would be totally free with resources open to everyone so that the company would have to be ethical to remain competitive and would have to treat its workers very well to urge them not to leave and become self-employed.
Something I see a lot with most free-market libertarian theories (both on the right and left) is that the ideas proposed by their theories would work very well assuming that the market is *totally* free. But – just to play devil's advocate once again – what happens if the market eventually becomes unfree? What happens if, say, thugs find a way to monopolize certain resources without the state since they figure that monopolization would create more profits for them? Or if competition within the market somehow becomes lop-sided?
What I'm trying to get at is: is it a wise idea to set the *only* goal as creating a totally free market or do we need to set other goals and take other actions as well? Is having a free market enough to ensure that conditions for everyone get better?
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To me, it seems the main stumbling block to freedom is the argument as to what "the other guy" might do.
It is POSSIBLE in a free market society that a monopoly will form, but it is not PROBABLE.
If the idea of what is possible is the level of the bar we are setting, then regulations on how to walk across the street, whether or not you can have sharp edges in your kitchen, etc., etc., would be perfectly okay to someone who is trying to regulate for every possibility.
The argument should not be focused on what single one thing some great thinker can come up with to solve every problem. Freedom acknowledges the fact that there are a lot less great thinkers then those that lay claim to the title and allows for people to come up with their own answers.
In a truly free society, if some thugs try to come in and create a monopoly, I get my gun and go shoot the thugs. That is my answer for thugs in a free society. It is one of I am sure thousands of answers that would come up in the free market.
If we prefer totalitarianism to freedom for fear of "what the other might do" we will be under the rule of tyrants until the end of time.
I reckon everybody here is a Statist — an agricultural city-STATIST (CIVILIZATIONist.)* But I’m willing to be corrected.
Is anybody advocating a Non-State sociopolitical typology** — a real, proven, successful human society that worked for hundreds of thousands of years until the coercive agricultural city-State invaded?
Remember, the city-State’s Agora was a public “place of assembly” where male land-owners who were citizens would gather for military duty or to hear statements of the ruling king or council. And there were some merchants kept stalls or shops to sell their goods.
There never has been and never will be a city with State-level political organization. Study evolutionary biology and especially Dunbar’s Number*** to find out why.
A “stateless civilization” is as fantastical as an animated corpse — the libertarian zombie.
_____________
* Definition: The word CIVILIZATION comes from the Latin civilis, meaning civil, related to the Latin civis, meaning citizen, and civitas, meaning city or City-STATE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization
** For more than 99 per cent of human history people have lived in groupings that social scientists call “non-state societies.”
NON-STATE AND STATE SOCIETIES
[adapted from Elman R. Service (1975), Origins of the State and Civilization: The Process of Cultural Evolution. New York: Norton.]
http://faculty.smu.edu/rkemper/cf_3333/Non_State_…
***Thesis #7: Humans are best adapted to band life.
by Jason Godesky | 22 September 2005
http://rewild.info/anthropik/thirty/
Indubitably. "Natural rights" aren't natural in the way gravity is. Gravity exists, period, whereas "doing what you want except if it were to harm others" is a view of ethics.