Restricting free trade arrangements (beyond preventing the use of force and fraud on others) cannot solve the real problem, yet it hobbles the market?s ability to coordinate people?s cooperative and productive plans, causing harm in the misguided attempt to accomplish good.
I am a believer in the power of liberty ? voluntary relationships ? to bring out the best in individuals and, therefore, society. But that well-founded belief makes it painful to see markets (willing exchange) blamed for virtually everything someone can think to object to, in favor of coercion of some by others via government, inspired by some utopian vision that cannot actually be achieved by that coercion.
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The question then becomes why unattainable utopian visions seem to be so much more attractive and inspirational to so many people than liberty, which can achieve the best society actually attainable, and how the spell that leads to ever-increasing statism can be broken.
Leonard Read, one of America?s most prolific defenders of liberty in the 20th century, considered that question. And in his 1969 Let Freedom Reign, he offered a useful two-part answer in his chapters, ?Free Market Disciplines? and ?The Bloom Pre-Exists in the Seed.?
In ?Free Market Disciplines?, Read showed that liberty?s failure to gain more adherents than utopian statism can be, in part, traced to the fact that it is the ends envisioned, rather than the means involved, that often motivate people. And since unlike utopian visions, freedom, including free markets ? an ?amoral servant? ? cannot be proven to have no objectionable results to anyone, liberty can be saddled with an inspirational deficit. However, attributing disliked results to markets misplaces the blame. Therefore, restricting voluntary arrangements (beyond preventing the use of force and fraud on others) cannot solve the real problem, yet it hobbles the market?s ability to coordinate people?s cooperative and productive plans, causing harm in the misguided attempt to accomplish good:
[T]he free market is the only mechanism that can sensibly, logically, intelligently discipline production and consumption. For it is only when the market is free that economic calculation is possible. Free pricing is the key.
[But] it is necessary to recognize the limitations of the free market. The market is a mechanism, and thus it is wholly lacking in moral and spiritual suasion?it embodies no coercive force whatsoever.
[Quoting W.H. Pitt]: ?[T]he market, with its function for the economizing of time and effort, is servant alike to the good, the compassionate, and the perceptive as well as to the evil, the inconsiderate, and the oblivious.?
Given a society of freely choosing individuals, the market is that which exists as a consequence ? it is a mechanism that is otherwise non-definitive. It is the procession of economic events that occur when authoritarianism?is absent.
In a word, the free market is individual desire speaking in exchange terms ? When the desires of people are depraved, a free market will accommodate the depravity. And it will accommodate excellence with equal alacrity. It is "servant alike to good ? and evil.?
It is because the free market serves evil as well as good that many people think they can rid society of evil by slaying this faithful, amoral servant. This is comparable to? breaking the mirror so that we won?t have to see the reflection of what we really are.
The market is but a response to ? a mirror of ? our desires.
Instead of cursing evil, stay out of the market for it; the evil will cease to the extent we cease patronizing it. Trying to rid ourselves of trash by running to government for morality laws is like trying to minimize the effects of inflation by wage, price, and other controls. Both destroy the market, that is, the reflection of ourselves?attempts not to see ourselves as we are?
To slay this faithful, amoral servant is to blindfold, deceive, and hoodwink ourselves?denying the market is to erase the best point of reference man can have.
The market is a mechanism and is neither wise nor moral?The market is an obstacle course; before I can pursue my bent or aptitude or obsession, I must gain an adequate, voluntary approval or assent?My own aspirations, regardless of how determined, or lofty, or depraved, do not control the verdict. What these others?will put up in willing exchange for my offering spells my success or failure, allows me to pursue my bent or not.
Eventually, in a free society, the junk goes to the junk heap and achievements are rewarded.
I believe that anyone should follow his star; but let him do so with his own resources or with such resources as others will voluntarily supply. This is to say that I believe in the market, a tough, disciplinary mechanism.
[An] individual, in the free market, considers how much of his own property he is willing to put on the line?the free market gives short shrift to projects that are at or near the bottom of individual preferences.
Read saw that defenders of liberty must face the fact that markets enable people to do whatever they want better ? i.e., that it is an amoral servant. It cannot be relied upon with certainty to only do good and inspirational things. But whenever they enable doing ill, they only reflect what some desire. If we reformed ourselves, markets could do no harm. And Read had great faith such improvements were possible, that ?Eventually, in a free society, the junk goes to the junk heap and achievements are rewarded.? In contrast, coercively ?reforming? ourselves by law does not eliminate the cause of such harm and so does little to actually stop it, but the restrictions on markets adopted in the process throw out the amoral servant to doing greater good than can be accomplished via any other mechanism.
Read proceeded to address the crucial distinction between the ?inspirational? utopian ends and the means that such ends necessarily entail in ?The Bloom Pre-Exists in the Seed.?
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