Darwin's Market: Realistic Libertarianism

In the previous post about varieties of Libertarianism I labeled Tom's views as something akin to "Classical Libertarianism," but I honestly could not come up with a tag for mine. Finally found it: here's an article for the CATO Institute (read it anyway) by Brink Lindsay, "Apostasy? Am I a Libertarian?" that uses the term "Pragmatic Libertarian." That seems to describe me.

One of the issues I have always had with free-market capitalists (of whom I count myself as one) and all sorts of fiscal conservatives, laissez faire capitalists, and others is an almost religious faith that, "the market will sort things out," or "the market will set things right if you just leave it alone." In a specific, limited economic sense I subscribe to this view. However, in its more virulent form I think it is potentially dangerous and misleading.

So I wanted to approach the issue of markets and what they down from an evolutionary perspective (I wanted to use the phrase "darwinian naturalistic" here, but over on First State Politics, Dana Garrett has misinterpreted my use of the term as "just a right-wing smear on evolution," so I will be careful):

Why did your mother tell you not to talk with your mouth full? (Answer: in my house, because she'd hit you if you tried; but in evolutionary terms the human throat is constructed so that we cannot swallow and breathe at the same time.)

Why do you have to take Vitamin C every day? (Answer: because a few million years ago, sometime after hominid lines diverged from their primate cousins, the gene segment that allows an organism to synthesize Vitamin C somehow went inactive.)

Why do some people of African heritage suffer from the ravages of sickle-cell anemia? (Answer: because the same gene complex that gives you sickle-cell also confers a strong immunity to the tse-tse fly; unfortunately, that immunity loses its value if your descendants migrate away from a fly-infest area, but they will still have to deal with the disease.)

These are examples of what you might call (and some evolutionary biologists do call) "sub-optimal design." Basically, it means that since neo-Darwinian evolutionary naturalism (random mutation plus natural selection mediated by chance, genetic drift, and other variables) is a blind process--design without a designer--there are going to be flaws in any individual organism. A really fun read that captures a lot of these ideas (very accurately, too) is Robert Sawyer's science fiction novel Illegal Alien.

I am making this point not to argue evolution, intelligent design, or creationism, but to draw a parallel with market economies.

Evolution is an amoral, blind process that has no other purpose that anyone has yet discovered than to replicate DNA. (And don't go toward Dennis Dennett's obsession with memes, please don't go there.) Evolution doesn't care about individuals or generations; evolution is a mindless process that ruthlessly (OK I slipped that one in) culls for improved survivability.

Under Darwin's model, even intelligence is only one aspect of evolutionary fitness, and not necessarily an essential one.

There is a sea-creature (I forget the name but if you are insistant I will look it up if you insist) that actually reaches a certain point in its development when it has latched onto the right nutrient flow in undersea vents where it will eat happily for the rest of its life, whereupon--not needing it anymore--it eats its own brain.

Put most simply: evolution produced you, but it doesn't (can't) give a shit about you.

Markets operate the same way.

Markets are (I hesitate here, others could provide a better definition) a blind, patterned response to various economic forces. Human beings only imperfectly understand those forces (dynamics?), and thus when we operate as entrepeneurs or intervene (as governments) we inevitably face what conservative sociologist Charles Murray labeled, "The Law of Unintended Consequences." So what?

Let's simplify this down to "supply and demand" for a moment, because its one market principle that most people feel they undertand. Scenario: there is both a scarcity of, and a demand for, cheap little Donald Duck toys like the ones my kids used to demand at Disney and throw away an hour later. Market economics, operating in an unfettered manner, will eventually respond and provide Disney with more cheap sailor-suit ducks. Will they come from a small, home-based business in North Carolina, a sweat shop in Guatemala, or prison factories in China?

You know as well as I do that supply and demand suggests that Disney is going to purchase the cheapest, most consistentably available supply of those loathesome ducks that it can get its grubby corporate hands on. (Which in reality mean [C], Chinese prison factories.) The market will act to meet the demand, but nowhere in that process does the market ever exercise any moral or ethical judgment about the production methods--because it can't.

A market, like natural selection, does not think. It merely operates.

In a situation wherein everybody is playing by common rules for things like workplace safety, not using lead paint on toys, wages, intellectual property rights, etc., then the unfettered market does an excellent "invisible hand" job of managing the economy in ways that real people can live with.

Libertarians like markets, and they prefer to allow markets to operate rather than to deal with the unintended consequences of ham-handed governmental interference. (Me, too!) But Libertarians are also about the absence of coercion, individual freedom, respect for the law of contract, and other humanistic values, which sometimes must necessarily place them in opposition to the unfettered operation of markets.

Take a favoriate Libertarian example: prostitution. If a woman wants to trade sexual favors for money in an open, free-market exchange with a client (male, female, or otherwise), then why should that become the government's business?

Nice theory. Reality is somewhat murkier. We first have to establish the absence of coercion. A prostitute being intentionally kept addicted to crack by a pimp who beats her and takes most of her money for the evening is not a free agent engaging in a capitalist transaction. A child below the age of consent (regardless of what you think that age is, most people agree that at some age a child does not possess the intellectual understanding to give sexual consent) is not a free agent in the capitalist sense. A college student who decides to turn a few tricks or pose for some porn photos, on the other hand, may be the perfect example of an uncoerced free agent who should be able to do what he or she damn well pleases so long as it doesn't hurt anybody else.

Here's the problem: as long as there is a demand for commercial sex (and prices to fly to Thailand remain too high for the average middle-aged man), the market will provide a supply of prostitutes. And the market does not (cannot!) give a shit about whether some of them are abused, 10-year-old crack addicts or not.

Markets, in that sense, are as blind as natural selection.

So people do (have always) intervene in market operations based on their social and cultural values, unintended consequences be damned. Even Libertarians. We just advocate that sort of intervention as a last resort rather than a first preference.

I want to live in a society that protects 10-year-old children from prostitution even if that comes at the cost of dislocating the market. A purist will argue that if I take 10 year olds out of the supply pool the market will only replace them with something else--perhaps mentally retarded adults. But if and when that happens I have to deal with it, because I choose to hold certain truths, certain values, as more important than leaving markets to operate unfettered under all conditions.

I do not believe in government "social engineering" as practiced by both wings of the Demopublican party today, but my personal belief in individual liberty and my hostility to coercion will not let me stand aside in clear-cut cases of market-created harm.

Does the end justify the means? Spider Robinson wrote this in a story and had two characters answer, respectively, "I don't know" and "Depends." The character who asked the question then nods in appreciation and says (paraphrasing from memory), "Good. I don't trust people who can answer that one either 'yes' or 'no.'"

This is indeed the slipperiest of all slippery slopes for anyone (especially a Libertarian) to start down, because there are more than enough people willing to take this argument and let cops stop me for the lack of seat belts or the Wilmington City Council legislate precisely how many centimeters of underwear can peek out of my pants on city streets. Advocates of personal freedom don't want to have this discussion around social engineering self-styled "progressives" because the first thing you know I will not be able to sit down with a cigar to read Penthouse while munching trans-fat-covered popcorn and playing the first Boston album on my stereo loud enough to damage my hearing.

But among ourselves--just folks--we owe it to ourselves to have a very forthright discussion of when and to what extent our values must cause us to interfere in the operation of markets, in the same way that we use every medication, every therapy, and every scientific process at our command to derail or defeat the evolutionary process when we think it necessary.

Because human (and corporate, and government) intervention in markets has always happened, and will continue to happen, even if Ron Paul becomes president. We find ourselves therefore constantly fighting to keep such interventions as carefully bounded as we can--hence the need for this dialogue.