In Give Me a Break, John Stossel, crusading libertarian, is back.
Actually, I agree with a fair amount of his observations about problems in the regulatory state. I especially agree on civil liberties issues.
But, on economic issues, I strongly disagree with his solution and the philosophy behind it.
Stossel’s laissez-faire view of capitalism traces straight back to Adam Smith and Wealth of Nations. Smith, a Deist philosopher writing in the midst of the Scottish Enlightenment, brought two big but usually unexamined philosophical presumptions to his economic theory.
1. An orderly, organized Deistic God created this universe to run in a mechanical, orderly, clockwork fashion.
2. As part of that organization, humans are inherently rational creatures.
Well, other than eco-libertarian like Stossel, few people believe either one of those things today.
First of all, Christians, whether conservative evangelical, moderate mainline Protestant, or Catholic, would at least question No. 1, in my opinion. Truly liberal Christians, freethinkers from other religions and most secularists reject it outright.
(I do have some atheist libertarian acquaintances; but the closest of them are even more blind-faith on these issues than people with a religious background and, as far as I know, refuse to perform such self-examination.)
Second, modern clinical study of mass psychology and related disciplines will tell us, and has shown us, that purchasing decisions are 80 percent emotion and 20 percent rational thought at best.
So, while Stossel may be right on examining some of the problems with the modern regulatory state — yes, big corporations do co-opt regulatory agencies — his solutions, and the theory behind them, are all wet.
That's because of belief 3, a subpoint of belief 1.
3. An unregulated market will naturally, logically and organizedly act for the benefit of all.
As best as I can articulate it, the wrongly-held belief here is in a Deist version of a collective unconscious or something similar; it's also why many people, including otherwise intelligent ones, falsely ascribe “purpose” to evolution.
There is no person/being/force that has built in a purpose to a market economy; there is no Aristotelean "final cause" that is built in to the system.
Instead, the biggest players in a market economy will always work to run it to their best interest.
In short, modern economic libertarianism has confounded the most unsubstantiable parts of Smith’s underlying philosophy with a 20th-century flavored Platonic-type, or Randian, idealism. Hence, libertarianism as religious cult.
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