Faith in the Free Market? Part 1

Should we have faith in the free market to deliver our common good?

This is perhaps the greatest economic debate of the past few centuries, and one of the more interesting things to talk about as an economist with non-economists, usually because they aren’t that interested in the nitty-gritty of economic discourse and instead prefer to dialogue about politics.

It is also interesting to me because there are Catholics on both sides of the fence: those who vehemently support the free market and those who vehemently attack it. I’ve already noted how CST approaches the battle between liberalism or capitalism and socialism or collectivism in this multipart series. The case they present both against and for the free market is compelling and good, but there are other ways to prove or disprove its effectiveness in achieving the good for society. This is my purpose for this multi-part series. I wish to explore the arguments used to justify or rebuke the free market and point then toward the conclusions I take from this exploration of which we can engage in a friendly debate.

Two great mistakes in this debate must be noted at the outset. The first is that many treat this as a black and white problem. Those who advocate for the free market tend to argue that any measure against it puts us on the road to serfdom, or on the road to soviet communism which clearly had disastrous consequences for humanity. Those who attack the free market are usually less black and white, but are also guilty of putting the blame on the free market as a whole. There is no gray area, there is no middle option, there are no alternatives to communism or capitalism. Pope Pius XI called these the twin rocks of shipwreck—extreme individualism and extreme collectivism. The great mistake here is failing to see alternatives to these twin wreckers of ships. Rejection of “the free market” does not necessarily mean support for total communism and vice versa. We must be able to envision degrees of free market-ness or collectivism and we must direct them always to our common good.

The other great mistake is (logically) prior to the first mistake. It is failing to recognize that there is no such thing as a truly free market. That is, no market system is completely free from government intervention. Free markets fundamentally require private property and enforceable contracts, which require an enforcer. Absent of government, ‘free’ markets are closer to black markets where the market actors provide their own governance, which is why, for example, illegal drug markets are particularly violent. Absent of government protection of property and contracts, they must enforce it themselves with power, weapons, and violence. So a truly free market system is closer to anarchy, and most free market proponents are well aware of this (some seem to forget it though). However, since the government is involved in protecting property and enforcing contracts they are necessarily involved with defining property and legality of contracts and so their ‘intervention’ into markets is more of a degree than of a kind. They DO intervene, the question is, how much? This lends itself well to the lesson learned from the first mistake—free market-ness is a degree, not a black and white situation.

The danger or trap that is so easy to fall into, is putting your faith in the free market, this institution that is supposed to bring about our overall good out of the self-interested actions of individuals. We put our faith and our trust in a direction-less institution that does not see persons and does not consider their good. If we are to rely on a higher degree of free market-ness to provide the common good, then we should do so with good reasoning, but we should not expect our selfish actions to result collectively in the common good. To me, nothing could be more anti-Christian. Christ’s teaching is all about the two commandments upon which all the rest sit: Love your God, who is love itself, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Love is an authentic gift of self, not a devotion entirely to one’s self-interests.

(There are those who argue self-interest does not necessarily equal selfishness. This of itself requires a long response, but quickly, my reply is: why risk confusing the two? Those who do not properly understand the distinction will think it’s valid to act selfishly when you argue for self-interested action. And why put the emphasis on negative freedom? Authentic freedom does involve freedom from coercion, but must always be directed toward the good which might mean a restriction of complete negative freedom, or complete self-interested action. Christian defense of the free market should make no reference to self-interested action, but rather to Christian self-giving actions. In this case, it is quite reasonable for a Christian to argue that greater free market-ness will allow self-giving actions to collectively bring about the common good).

So the task set to us then, is to decide the appropriate degree of free market-ness for a good society, or from the Catholic Social Teaching perspective, for the common good, which necessarily includes justice, truth, and charity.

How much should the government intervene? In which situations should the government intervene more rather than less and less rather than more?

Economists of all persuasions have researched the impacts of policy on the economy and economic relationships and worked to develop models to support their case on these very questions. Some have started with the data to support their conclusions. Some have started with their conclusions and worked to find data to support them. Others have largely ignored data and have instead constructed great mathematical models based on certain assumptions about human behavior to support certain conclusions.

This last group has been the dominant group in Economics for over a century now and so most of this post addresses their arguments, but I will also present data to support certain conclusions as well. The importance of this is that many politicians and the public in general take the advice of economists on matters of ‘free market-ness’. So if you’re going to listen to us, then you should know exactly what we are saying, the strengths and weaknesses of our arguments and models, and what conclusions we can then draw from them.

Part 2 will take a closer look at the model most often used to defend the free market which also happens to be the model everyone learns in principles of economics courses.