King Market - Reframing Freedom

We are accustomed to thinking authority must be centralized. Even after Foucault, the idea that we are more ‘ruled’ by distributed forces or actors like the corporations in the market is difficult to grasp – it does not fit in our linguistic frame of ‘authority’ and ‘power’. To say that corporation X is oppressing us or has undue control over our lives I think would be a lot easier to comprehend and accept than the claim that ‘the market’ is. We don’t think of it as an actor, particularly one whose influence needs moral evaluation, and yet, that is exactly the case. Think of it this way: If you are walking in a labyrinth and you meet a guard who blocks your path, what is the stronger influence on your ability to move – the guard or the walls of the labyrinth?

We need a new linguistic frame that allows us to understand authority and domination (infringement of ‘autonomy’ if you will) is systemic. The reason it is so difficult to transfer our conceptions about limits of power from the political domain, where the constitution limits actions of the government, to systems like the market (but not just the market, climate and society might need similar evaluation) is that key elements of the frame – the authoritative/powerful actor – is missing. We are used to individuals wielding power from the beginning of our lives in childhood. Personifying the government is easy – the executive is a single person; other bodies are small groups of people. But how can we do this with ‘market forces’? This we tend to assimilate to luck or nature - forces beyond our control that we learn to not accord moral relevance as we grow up. Even Mill could only articulate the majority as a tyrant when it controlled the means of coercion – government (contrast this with accounts of social oppression of conformity in Ibsen and Sinclair Lewis).

One might respond that the real reason we don’t talk about the market the same way we do about government is that the latter coerces, while the market merely provides choices, or, at most, structures our choices. Government is thereby in a class of its own as threat. This sounds plausible because 'coercion' a part of the authority frame mentioned above. To notice it, we need to see an authority figure – we can’t imagine coercion without a coercing agent. In fact this response has strong appeal because the term itself (rather than just the frame within which it operates) has come to require intentional action.

However, the response misses the point because what is at stake is not coercion, but impingement on our life choices -- on our freedom. Centuries of having the government as the greatest threat to individual freedom has driven us to identify (intentional) coercion as the primary danger, but today, in many societies, this is no longer true. We are only concerned about coercion because it negatively affects our freedom – the latter is what matters. Coercion is sufficient, but not necessary to restrict our freedom. So let us recognize the new sources of this influence, such as the market, and come up with new linguistic frames that do not require a single authority figure and give us a clearer picture of reality and what affects our lives.

Lobbying as a symptom of our social problems: King Dolla

Why are business associations consistently more effective than groups like environmental organizations (besides the fact that it is easier for smaller number of interested parties to act)? Because monetary effects (e.g. costs to business) are easily quantified and related to by all, businesses and the public, especially by the consumers that we have become. Environment or health concerns can subjectively matter more to people than a potential regulation does to a company (esp. to the middle class in the developed world who do not really have to worry about tangible basics like nutrition, shelter, or even internet connectivity) – but they are harder to quantify and thus think about.

The market has reached far into our lives, but it cannot accommodate many things – which are dutifuly left by the wayside. What does it mean that 'we have become consumers instead of citizens', the recent slogan of progressives? It is not just that we hold consuming more important in our mental world than political participation, but that we apply a consumer metric to everything we deal with. We consume healthcare, beauty of the environment, fresh air. But a ‘consumer’ is a market participant and a consumer metric is a monetary one. Thus, for instance, consumption in the domain of health can only describe services provided (which have market-set price) not the potential health benefits to the person (except through perversions like lost productivity). A consumer orientation equates value and price – which do align in goods that really are commodities, but do not and cannot in domains like health or nature. The old mantra "you can't put a price on X" today has the sad undertone that X will be simply ignored.

People naturally gravitate to heuristics. When Clooney's understudy questions his use of stereotyping in Up in the Air, he responds, "it's faster." Simplify, streamline -- we are powerless to argue against these commands (and where does their appeal come from? Exactly). Price offers just such a heuristic.

The climate crisis could be an excellent opportunity to drive this point to public consciousness, and demonstrate that universal commodification is a recipe for disaster. Unfortunately, the left has capitulated to business interests and has started to argue for emission regulation in market terms – in monetary comparisons of instituting and foregoing regulation now, instead of considering the true “costs” – loss of land and livelihood whose market valuation does not capture its true value.

There is an alternative. We have plenty of other ways to talk about the things that matter to us besides their price and cost. Quality of life; sources of (national) pride (e.g. parks, national monuments, just social arrangements); social responsibility; what we leave for our children; the social compact (this one is a bit antiquated, but is making a comeback). All these kinds of frames express judgments of value without drawing on market terminology or mental orientation.

This shift is inescapably difficult. "If we do this we will leave the next generation a $10 trillion debt" is so much more alarming and obviously actionable than "If we don't do this, the arctic icecap will melt", or "50 million of faceless Americans will lack access to healthcare." And nothing spells doom faster today than a prognosis of difficulty. But we have to do it anyway.