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Thread: Why Free Markets Need a Cultural Base

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    Why Free Markets Need a Cultural Base

    Why Free Markets Need a Cultural Base explores the need for free markets to contribute to civilizational development, rather than the inverse.

    ...I have discovered, however, that good economic arguments only go so far in changing the minds of market-skeptic conservatives. If the state doesn’t engage in extensive and deep economic regulation, I’ve heard more than one conservative say, what’s to stop rampant materialism from becoming the norm? How, they say, do we prevent the type of dynamic commercial relationships associated with markets from putting immense pressure on other types of human relations, especially families?

    ...A leading architect of the 1948 German economic miracle, Röpke’s 1960 book A Humane Economy stresses the importance of understanding the fact of scarcity, the workings of free prices, the significance of marginal utility, and other foundational assumptions of free-market economics. But the book is equally focused on the moral and cultural conditions needed — self-discipline, Tocquevillian habits of association and a rich civil society as well as virtues such as trust, honesty, generosity, and a sense of justice, to name just a few — if markets are not to facilitate societies in which hedonism and materialism constitute the limits of our moral horizons. The sources of these preconditions, Röpke specified, are “families, church, genuine communities, and tradition”: i.e., forms of knowledge and human association that self-described conservatives typically value.

    ...In The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, Michael Novak concisely articulated the economic arguments favoring markets over interventionism using language about as far removed from an economics textbook as can be imagined. Yet Novak devoted as much time to exploring the political, constitutional, and cultural preconditions required for a functioning market economy in which norms that went beyond utility-satisfaction were taken seriously.

    ...As demonstrated by Gregory M. Collins in Commerce and Manners in Edmund Burke’s Political Economy, the father of modern conservatism certainly favored greater domestic and international economic liberty and market freedoms. He was also deeply critical of the reigning mercantilism of his time. Burke nonetheless believed that expanding commercial liberties had to be embedded in habits and institutions that Burke associated with social affections, aristocratic moderation, and religious norms.

    ...In 1790, Smith added a new part titled “Of the Character of Virtue” to the sixth and final edition of his Theory of Moral Sentiments.

    Smith’s reasons for making this substantial addition to a book first published in 1759 may never be fully known. But perhaps Smith understood that as commercial society and liberties to innovate, trade, own and use property, and economically associate with others began to spread, it was important to stress that these freedoms should be enveloped by moral expectations, especially commercial, classical, and particular religious virtues. Self-interest, even rational self-interest, wasn’t enough for Smith.

    ...These, I’d suggest, are the type of thinkers and arguments that should be put in front of young conservatives skeptical of markets today. For one thing, they illustrate the complexity of market economies while paying equal heed to the type of moral-cultural underpinnings that conservatives care about. But they also remind us that there’s no government program able to will such a moral ecology into existence. Indeed, excessive interventionism tends to crowd out the type of bottom-up, associational life that people such as Röpke, Novak, Burke, and Smith considered essential if free markets are to contribute to civilizational development, rather than the inverse....
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Meanwhile our young people are having Central Government Socialism drilled into them along with all the WOKE.
    My Revenge will be Success! - Donald J Trump

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    I have discovered, however, that good economic arguments only go so far in changing the minds of market-skeptic conservatives. If the state doesn’t engage in extensive and deep economic regulation, I’ve heard more than one conservative say, what’s to stop rampant materialism from becoming the norm?
    For like the umpteenth time this week -

    A market that is stateless does not benefit the average person who is subject to a state. This is because the Libertarian dogma about a stateless world denies the basic rules of human existence, for time immemorial.

    The rule of Human interaction reveals that - across all of time and cultures, with virtually no exceptions noted other than some Caribbean Island tribes who lived a subsistence lifestyle in total isolation where the temperature was perfect, no one needed clothes or shelter, and food plentiful all year round -

    Humans as a rule form into societies in which an elite uses cunning, guile and then force to methodically attempt to turn the bulk of the population into rentier Serfs.

    It does not matter much whether you attempt to describe this elite as Communist, Capitalist, or any other sort of terminology, without some code of Justice that is actually 'just', in force, to prevent this almost universal subjugation, it will always recur.

    The almost humorous aspect of this certain outcome, is the incapacity of modern humans to even now, recognize this and grasp these facts that are so unwelcome to their reasoning capacity.

    2100 BC -
    Ur-Nammu … in accordance with his principles of equity and truth … [did] establish equity in the land; he banished malediction, violence and strife … the orphan was not delivered up to the rich man; the widow was not delivered up to the mighty man; the man of one shekel was not delivered up to the man of one mina [sixty shekels].
    Last edited by Banks of Sabis; 08-09-2022 at 02:26 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Banks of Sabis View Post
    For like the umpteenth time this week -

    A market that is stateless does not benefit the average person who is subject to a state. This is because the Libertarian dogma about a stateless world denies the basic rules of human existence, for time immemorial.

    The rule of Human interaction reveals that - across all of time and cultures, with virtually no exceptions noted other than some Caribbean Island tribes who lived a subsistence lifestyle in total isolation where the temperature was perfect, no one needed clothes or shelter, and food plentiful all year round -

    Humans as a rule form into societies in which an elite uses cunning, guile and then force to methodically attempt to turn the bulk of the population into rentier Serfs.

    It does not matter much whether you attempt to describe this elite as Communist, Capitalist, or any other sort of terminology, without some code of Justice that is actually 'just', in force, to prevent this almost universal subjugation, it will always recur.

    The almost humorous aspect of this certain outcome, is the incapacity of modern humans to even now, recognize this and grasp these facts that are so unwelcome to their reasoning capacity.

    In a way what you're describing is the Pareto Principle.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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