...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....