As some of us are wont to say:
There cannot be a “free” market generally, but not in alcohol, gambling, drugs, prostitution or pornography; therefore, there must not be a “free” market generally.
But even we never expected the Adam Smith Institute to call for public subsidies for pornography and for violent video games!
I honestly couldn't think of a title for this post. Any suggestions?
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Why is it impossible to have a broadly free-market model, while placing various restrictions on the sale of certain kinds of goods and services? This, after all, is what we see in very many countries.
ReplyDeleteAre you making a semantic point - if you place restrictions on it, then it isn't really free? Or is it a practical point - once you've got a free market, restrictions will be impossible?
The former strikes me as true but uninteresting, and irrelevant to the way our economy (in which we do have a free market in all sorts of things, and restrictions on all sorts of other things).
The latter is quite simply false (unless you think the model is invalidated by the existence of black markets - but black markets are by definition illegal, and they're not prevented by any economic system at all, and in particular not prevented by any economic system which restricts the sale of certain goods and services and thus forces those who want to buy and sell those goods and services to do so illegally).
Anyway, given that you don't agree with a "free" market generally, are there any goods and services at all whose price should be set by those selling them, in response to customer demand?
If not, who sets the prices? And if so, doesn't your criticism of the "free" market apply to your own preferred system too?
I agree with Stuart.
ReplyDeleteSo do I.
ReplyDeleteLooks like David does too.
ReplyDeleteOh no, I don't!
ReplyDeleteBoth Stuart's parctical point and the one that he describes as "semantic" are the case. You either have a "free" market (in which a black market is by definition legally impossible), or you don't. If you believe in such a thing in general, then you have to believe in it in relation to every good or service without exception: drugs, prostitution, pornography, the lot.
Which is why I don't believe in it at all. I am happy to see the market dictate the price of most goods and services, but I do not define that market as "free", but rather in terms of the use of the power of the democratic State to serve greater social, cultural and political goods.
That is in principle normative, and the absence of such State involvement, however extensive and at times even necessary that absence in practice, is in principle exceptional.
There is no other way of conserving everything that conservatives exist in order to conserve, both against the "free" market itself, and against the Jacobinism, Marxism, anarchism or Fascism into which it drives its despairing millions, and even billions, of victims.
If you believe in such a thing [a "free" market] in general, then you have to believe in it in relation to every good or service without exception: drugs, prostitution, pornography, the lot.
ReplyDeleteWhy?
David,
ReplyDeleterunning by your definitions (which seems fair - it is, after all, your blog) we don't live in a free market. Nor indeed does anywhere I can think of (there may be some places, but I doubt any prominent examples).
The UK does not have an entirely free system for drugs, alcohol or prostitution (to name but a few). Nor is such a system advocated by any major political party.
Which countries are "driving despairing millions into the arms of equally corrosive Jacobinism, Marxism, anarchism or Fascism"?
You seem to reject something which is favoured by almost no-one at all. Could it be that when normal people talk about a free market, they mean something slightly different than youself?
Terry, "free" marketeers believe that theirs is the moral case. They don't believe in amoral economics any more than I do. My argument is that their economic views are immoral.
ReplyDeleteFar from, as Fionualla suggests, being held by nobody very much at all, the unbridled "free" market theory, though held by very few people, is most unfortunately held by, and acted upon, exactly the wrong ones: those who decide these things and those who influence them.
No major British party may advocate, in so many words, a "free" market in alcohol, drugs, gambling, prostitution or pornography. But that is nevertheless the inescapable logic of the position to which they all now subscribe, as those from whom they learned it are the first to tell them.
And, in office, both the Tories and New Labour accordingly gone out of their way to bring about this state of affairs, all the while protesting that they are doing no such thing.
The "free" market corrodes to nought such good things as national self-government (the only basis for international co-operation, and including the United Kingdom as greater than the sum of its parts), local variation, historical consciousness, family life, the whole Biblical and Classical patrimony of the West, agriculture, manufacturing, small business, close-knit communities, law and order, civil liberties, academic standards, all forms of art, mass political participation within a constitutional framework, and respect for the absolute sanctity of each individual human life from the point of fertilisation to the point of natural death. These things can only be protected against it by the action of the democratic State.
Such corrosion is precisely the context that has driven despairing millions into the arms of equally corrosive Jacobinism, Marxism, anarchism or Fascism wherever any of them has arisen. And we see that in Britain today, not least (though not exclusively) with the rise of the BNP.