By Abeed Khader
The idea of a free society, or an ‘ideal society’, is something an average person would never oppose.
They would argue that obviously, people of a nation should be free and should enjoy certain rights. Additionally, people generally agree that there needs to be some form of regulation in the society, either through markets or through the institutions of government.
In this time of political correctness, intolerance between different faith groups etc.; it is a grave mistake to assume your ideological opponent as someone evil or ill-intended. Ideological errors do exist in many political groups and nothing is farther from the truth than believing ‘everyone is right’. People seem to be lost in a negative spiral towards establishing a big authoritarian government because of some very simple misconceptions that have naturally been ingrained in their form of thinking.
In this article, I address 3 of such misconceptions – the unicorn fallacy, justice via regulation and redistribution, as well as the popular argument that free markets benefit only the rich.
The Unicorn Fallacy
In general, people are fed up with politicians, corruption in the bureaucracy, inefficiency in the current democratic system, most government programs and schemes favoring special interest group etc. It is quite ironic then, that most people suggest an expansion of state power as the solution to the very issues that they are experiencing from state-based power.
People tend to imagine the government as a magical institution, with perfect capabilities to carry out the corrective measures they personally devise with their creative mind. The fallacy, therefore, is a result of people looking over the fact that these institutions they idealize are going to be made up of people like any other.
A large portion of intellectuals (Hayekian sense) has been understanding institutions in a very wrong way. If people in the state of nature, acted completely civilized and in accordance with justice, there wouldn’t be any need for the existence of an institution with a monopoly over violence – such as the government.
In order to justify the state as a counterbalance against bad behavior in the private sphere; Rawls, Freeman, Ackerman, Dworkin and other leftist philosophers have fallen into the mistake of imagining away the bad behaviors in the public sphere. The root of wrongful idealization of functions, programs, schemes etc. of the government, stems from the vast influence that similar ideas have had on conventional political science academia around the world.
Leftists tend to idealize central state control because it seems to be an easy mechanism to achieve the ideal society of absolute equality (in terms of possessions) among the people and (in terms of reward from their labor) among the workers. Chris Freiman explores this issue in depth, in his book Unequivocal Justice.
Justice Through Regulation and Redistribution
One of the main reasons, why people advocate for state power over private property, is to facilitate various forms of regulations and redistribution to achieve social justice. People feel it is fair to use the institution of government to favor special groups because they are considered disadvantaged.
For instance, India has tools like reservation quotas, special subsidy programs, and special loan waivers etc. in place to ‘equalize’ justice in our society. The manifestation of this dangerous legitimization of group favoring, through the government takes the form of the hate we see between various political groups.
No matter which political party gets elected as the ruling government for a period of time, all the major and minor opposing groups feel oppressed by their policies and offended with unjust favoring for other groups. This creates a vicious cycle of democratically elected parties favoring their allies and neglecting their political opponents during their respective terms.
The minority always succumbs to rules and policies of the ruling majority, and that is not what democracy should result in. A true liberal democracy should be the one in which the government is there to protect every single individual from being oppressed by any other person or group.
This being very hard to achieve, Frédéric Bastiat wrote in The Law; “The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”
Free Markets Benefits Only The Rich
The opposition to a free market is due to the irrational fear for the survival of small businesses, and the threat of monopolies. Left-leaning individuals see it as the epitome of exploitation of the working class.
The picturing of such a harsh miserable world is directly in contrast with the real world evidence we have on market freedom. On an average, nations with more protection of property rights, more labour freedom, more business and financial freedom etc. tend to do better.
The most economically free nations are doing better in terms of reducing poverty, unemployment etc, and visual data on the economic freedom of various countries in the world is a testimony to the same. You can easily cross-check various degrees of economic freedom different countries enjoy with development statistics about the same country.
In almost all cases, many big inefficient corporates are able to survive only with government aid via taxpayers’ money or heavy regulations that prevent small businesses from easily competing with them. A market of free voluntary exchange is this amazing system by which people compete hard to make money; by trying to provide goods or services of value to others.
It isn’t at all ‘the survival of the fittest’ as the opponents of economic freedom say. Big and small businesses have different kinds of market penetration or class of customers. People compete and cooperate in a very dynamic complex world while earning and slowly improving their standard of living.
Thus, as Adam Smith said – “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” The argument for a libertarian society is not just about a more moral political system, but also a more realistic, prosperous and tolerant society of free responsible individuals.