The Republican Agenda is Bad for America

Many conservatives and libertarians are deeply confused about the morality
of markets. They view markets as pure and benign forces with the ability to
grant moral righteousness to any behavior that comes from them. This is
profoundly wrong.

Markets, like gravity and inertia, are natural occurrences–wild and
unfeeling in their actions. Markets are far more complex, of course, but
just like the others they blindly produce outcomes without thought of moral
repercussions. Inertia puts baby strollers in front of moving cars, and
gravity pulls hikers off of mountains. A critical mistake is made when
markets are seen differently.

People deprioritize morality as soon as markets enter the conversation. In
U.S. healthcare, for example, people too often suffer and die because their
insurance companies have cancelled their policies due to excessive use. A
child is dead. A father is dead. A mother suffers for lack of medicine. All
this because their provider put money before human livelihood. When
confronted with such evidence, the common response from the market
fetishists is:

Let the markets do their job. The problems arise when people like you, or
the government, step in and interfere with markets that should be left
alone.

This is precisely like a primitive civilization celebrating a broken piece
of pottery because their revered God of Gravity was responsible for
its death. Or, more accurately, a broken child.

Natural forces don’t produce moral outcomes by themselves; they are morally
inert. It is up to humans to discover or build their own morality, and to
strictly define and adhere to it. This morality–whatever it ends up
being–then becomes the framework for acceptable behavior, and anything that
causes us to deviate from it is unacceptable.

We must remember that markets are tools and nothing more. They are not equal
with our moral framework, or even part of it. They are simply a means of
accomplishing our goals within the context of our own priorities, and just
as gravity, or wind, or heat from the sun–tools must be controlled.

Even Adam Smith–the author of The Wealth of Nations and supposed champion of
unbridled markets–knew this:

Such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some respects a
violation of natural liberty. But these exertions of the natural liberty of
a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society
are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments. The
obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communication of
fire, is a violation of natural liberty, exactly of the same kind with the
regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed. ~ Adam Smith in
The Wealth of Nations

The number of market worshipers who are aware of Smith’s position on this is
frighteningly low.

Nuclear reactors are tools as well, and notice the safeguards we put in
place to protect ourselves from them. We don’t embrace nuclear fallout when
it happens, and ask that HAZMAT teams respect the radiation. No, we protect
our people and their livelihood first, because our moral priority is on
human livelihood.

The obvious truth is that it should be no different with markets, and the
fact that otherwise good people are not seeing this is causing cutting deep
wounds into our country. ::