Does the free market protect against tyranny?

How do you reconcile your belief in unregulated free-market capitalism as a divine protection against tyranny, with the fact that so many of the most profitable commodities in a capitalist market are the ones that appeal to our very basest and most disordered desires (drugs, p&rn, etc.)?

I wanted to comment on a misperception that I saw in this question. I don't believe in the free market as a divine protection against tyranny. It's more of a definition thing: tyranny is what you get when somebody takes away freedom. So the free market is what you get when there is no tyranny, at the moment. Freedom and tyranny are opposites.

I do believe the free market is divinely inspired, because God is the author of private property (Exodus 20). And I do believe that this free market has spectacular benefits in a lot of areas, chiefly that it satisfies the greatest value of human wants (including needs) possible in a world of scarcity. It is the only way to achieve the benefits of division of labor.

And it is the only moral way. Not having a free market means people exercising ownership rights over things that are not theirs, either by taking what is not theirs, or by telling them what they can and cannot do with it. It is to the Lord's glory that the only moral way to arrange human affairs is also the economically best way. It is to man's shame that we have so little trust in the Lord that we entertain the idea that other ways might actually outperform this one, and might therefore be worth trying. (If we have enough faith in the Lord, we will choose His way even when it looks to us like it doesn't work best, trusting that we are not seeing what He sees (I Corinthians 2)).

I have referred to a few of our institutions as protections against tyranny, but they are only partial protections. For example, democracy protects against tyranny by preventing the governing authority from taking some, but not all, actions which are offensive to the populace. Of course, democracy still allows plenty of tyranny. The people can vote to outlaw Jews, for example, or to educate each other's children. Separation of powers also helps to function as a check on tyranny, because an action is required to pass multiple checkpoints before it is put in force. However, one of the main reasons we have these imperfect safeguards is that rulers of centuries past learned that if they did not give the people some of what they were asking, the people would revolt. The rulers found they could take away much liberty, then give some back and claim that they were the source and guarantee of the rights and liberty, rather than its main oppressors. They found that they could take away much of the wealth of the people, then use it to provide some services and goods, claiming that the market would never provide these things and therefore presenting themselves as the "benefactors" of the people (Luke 22:25). As long as they gave the people enough to keep them happy, the vast majority of people would never entertain the idea that they might be better off without the rulers, and revolt would be staved off.

Since the free market makes it possible to provide for all kinds of services, it does make it possible to provide for protection against tyranny, like any other service. Just as you can today hire a security guard, even though the state tries to provide some security for you, under a truly, 100% free market, you could contract with a service to provide your security. These services would look a little bit like our governments, in that they are organizations formed to secure our rights (this is what Thomas Jefferson said was the purpose of government, in the Declaration of Independence). But unlike our governments, they would be prohibited from just assuming control over everybody in a region, potentially taking away their rights, by virtue of the fact that competing services would exist, and those services would be out securing the rights of their "citizens" against any other group that started encroaching. One of the real problems of government is that rather than allowing this need to be met on the free market, where all needs are best met (most economically), we've instead socialized this process. We know socialism is a horrible way to provide food. It's also a horrible way to provide security. Or anything else.

Freedom also helps perpetuate itself because a taste of freedom makes people discontent with tyranny. This is one reason the United States revolted against Great Britain: a century of "salutary neglect" got the colonists used to enjoying the benefits of their liberty, and they got upset when moves were made to take it away.

But the important thing is not that the free market provides some protection against tyranny. It's that if you don't have a free market, you have tyranny.

Jesus Christ, socialist?

Last month, Hugo Chavez was reinaugurated into office, saying, "I swear by Jesus Christ -- the greatest socialist in history." Was Jesus a socialist? Did the church which He founded (Matthew 16:18) and the apostles which He required all men to accept (Matthew 10:40) practice socialism?

Certainly not!

Socialism is practiced through state control. As we have seen, Christians are prohibited from exercising state control. Christians are also prohibited from practicing taxation, which is required in order to commit the redistribution of wealth that is the basis of socialism. Christians simply cannot be socialist.

But the early church was commanded to care for the poor, was it not? Isn't this the same as socialism?

No, there's one gigantic difference. Read Acts 5:4. "While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control?" Nobody in the Christian Church was required to give all of his property into common control, nor even a set percentage. Nobody was compelled to give. God left this all up to the freedom of each individual and their own personal sense of the obligation to God to help the poor in the name of Jesus (as well as their own individual judgment about holding the recipients accountable, which is required in certain ways, for example, by not helping those who refuse to work (II Thessalonians 3:10)).

Hugo Chavez doesn't offer anyone in his country the terms Peter did in Acts 5:4. Nobody in Venezuela is going to get the choice whether they want to participate or not. The state wants their possessions and industries to be socialized, and they will be. Chavez is taking the Lord's name in vain when he applies It to this.

The early Christian church did not practice socialism. The early Christian church practiced charity.

Sports are socialized

Have you ever noticed that in America, even sports are socialized?

Are high school sports paid for by private enterprise and the free market, or by money collected from all of society? Is the new Dallas Cowboys stadium being paid for by private enterprise and the free market, or by money collected from society?

How much free market competition is there to government football at the high school level? A tiny little bit in homeschooling and private schools. From whom are pro-football players selected? A free market system, or a government-run system paid for by society?

You do have your Little Leagues, but that's a perfect example of a free market springing up to address a need that government hasn't, in its infinite wisdom, attempted to address. Just think of the business in high school sports there could be if government wasn't monopolizing it all.

High school sports teams do engage in some private funding. But it's still primarily funded by taxpayers, and woe to those who suggest that taxes should not be spent in this manner. College sports do have some funding from admission tickets, concessions, etc. But since a lot of those colleges are state colleges, I'm sure there's some state funding there, so even though some of it's free market (just as some of pro sports is free market), it's mixed and polluted with ... socialism.

In fact, for state colleges, think of this: the state subsidizes the colleges, so more students go there than would otherwise go to private school. Then the students or the school administration vote to increase funding for their sports programs, extracting additional fees of the students, even those who don't like sports and voted no. So it's a roundabout way of the state encouraging, but not quite compelling, funding, merely by virtue of the fact that they interfered in a free market.

Sports are socialized. Especially in North Texas. Bet you never noticed that!

Now, why is it we quibble over socializing health care again?

Global warming

The conservative and libertarian response to global warming seems to consist primarily of questioning the science behind it. I've had a small problem with this approach: what if they're wrong? I'm not in a position to accurately appraise the science behind global warming. The fact is, most Americans aren't either, but everybody who sat through an Earth Day celebration in public school sixth grade science class and is literate enough to watch television thinks they are qualified to give an expert opinion, and they all "know" that global warming is occurring, and is man-made. The only difference between myself and them is that I'm willing to admit that I am as ignorant as they are.

Since I'm not qualified to appraise the science of global warming, all I've got is an uninformed gut feeling. My gut feeling is that global warming is probably occurring, and that there's a good chance it might be manmade. This sets me at odds with most conservatives and libertarians, who are quick to point out a number of scientists and studies that do not support either of these conclusions.

Of course, I'm even more at odds with liberals.

Liberals (and liberals who call themselves moderates) violently deny that any of the scientists or studies presented by the conservative side are valid. Among other objections, they say we need to follow the money. If you just look at who funds these scientists and studies, they say, you will see that they are all funded by big evil oil companies, or right-wing think tanks, or other organizations that allegedly have a vested interest in denying global warming. The sin of "global warming denial" is now being likened to Holocaust denial, and at least one person has suggested that a future mankind ravaged and dying by the effects of global warming should waste what precious little time and survival effort it has left holding "Nuremburg-style war crimes tribunals" for such criminals.

Well, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. How about we follow the money for the conventional "consensus" expressed by mainstream science. Who does most of the funding for the scientists and studies that are now claiming mankind is headed toward oblivion? The fact is that the vast majority of this is done through government grants. Academic institutions are heavily government funded, and these people are the ones arrogantly claiming that since they know the science, they know the way out of the problem.

What this means is that we have chosen to fund this scientific research through socialism: rather than leaving it up to a free market, "society" (a bunch of lucky elected government officials and appointed bureacrats claiming to act for everybody) has taken money from "society" (follow me closely, here, because this time when I say society I mean everybody else, the people who actually work for a living) in order to fund all of this studying collectively. This is socialism, and it is collectivism. It's the always wrong-headed idea that there is some big, amorphous "we" (all of us) that "we" (some of us) have to act on behalf of. Your money is being taken by other people to fund this. And if you support government funded research, then you are supporting taking money that doesn't belong to you in order to fund it. My father taught me that if I wanted something I should work for it and pay for it myself. So did my God.

I've often argued that if you socialize the education of your children, you get kids who are educated into socialism. The founders of this country believed in children being educated on the free market, what we today call private education (which encompasses education privately through institutions as well as education privately at home). For one hundred years this system was the vanguard of liberty, and a spectacularly free populace turned out to be spectacularly well educated, as well as spectacularly in love with liberty. Then a bunch of meddling Puritans in New England who called themselves Christians decided that they needed to save the world through force rather than through the Gospel of Christ. They engaged in stealing: taking money that did not belong to them to forcibly fund schools. And they engaged in enslavement: taking children who were not theirs, sons and daughters of free Americans, and compelling them to be in their schools rather than the educational environment chosen by their parents. Education was socialized. The rest of the nation followed this great idea, and today not only do we think this is normal, but we also think socialism is a great way to address most of the rest of society's great needs. That freedom-loving populace? Gone. Today we think socialism is freedom. The highly-educated populace disappeared as well.

So, follow the money on the mainstream global warming "consensus." Government funds the studies (socialism), and what do we get? We get a bunch of "scientists" playing politics and telling us that there is a severe problem from which we can only be saved through -- guess what? -- socialism! That's right; the only clear and obvious solution to global warming is to eradicate several more chunks of the free market. People's liberty to use what they own must be taken away, because we have conclusively proved (through government funded studies) that free people are destroying the earth.

And this is why even though I might be at minor odds with the right for thinking that global warming might be true, I'm at far greater odds with the left. I can spot an excuse for socialism a mile away. It's not the science that's coming out of these studies that bugs me, although I certainly think that should be questioned. (That is, after all, what science is all about.) It's the socialism. It's the arrogance that a bunch of people who are highly educated in one field should set "policy" for all of us. It's the arrogance that there should even be "policy." It's the audacity of a people who do not understand history, who do not understand economics, who do not understand the free market, to think that by virtue of their education in one field of human experience -- science -- that they are therefore the most educated and have become qualified to assume the role of kings and tyrants. Not only is this not freedom, it's probably not the way to solve the global warming problem.