The "gods of the marketplace"

This isn't a philosophical blog; I've elected to focus more on current issues here. But a recent post by Harold Feld provides an opportunity to discuss one of the basic points which underlie the principles of liberty. I left a brief comment on that entry, but would like to say something at more length here.

Harold criticizes libertarians as those who worship the "Gods of the Market Place," though not quite in Kipling's sense. Kipling refers in his poem to what we'd ironically call "latest and greatest" ideas, as opposed to the enduring maxims offered by the "Gods of the Copybook Headings." Harold is concerned that

A philosophy that fears only government power as a threat to freedom does not see outsourcing Big Brother as an end-run but as a desirable policy choice — or at least not a reachable concern. By contrast, I consider myself a Progressive because I fear both government power and private power, and seek to find a balance between the two that maximizes individual freedom and the ability of everyone to have a genuine opportunity to participate in our society.

"Outsourcing Big Brother" in this case refers to embodying the equivalent of the "Broadcast Flag" in cable signals, so that consumer equipment will record or delay broadcasts only if and as permitted by the sender. He blithely assumes that "Nor will electronics manufacturers refuse to integrate the new standards into devices — at least not if they want to sell any products," even though this constitutes a reduction in functionality rather than a sales point.

But it's not the technological issue I'm writing about here; it's the moral equivalence of "government power" and "private power" which is a central part of the philosophy of non-classical liberals, progressives, socialists, and other variants of the left.

The central difference should be obvious enough: Government power is the power of force. Private power, in the absence of crime or corruption, is the power of choice. A government can point a gun at you and give you orders. A business can withdraw from you and refuse to take orders.

"Big Brother," in Orwell's 1984, put spy cameras in people's homes, destroyed information, fought perpetual wars, and arrested and tortured dissidents. Regarding private business decisions, even at their worst, as the "outsourced" equivalent of this shows a disregard for the horrors of tyranny which I know isn't characteristic of Harold. It's just rhetoric, but it reflects that seriously mistaken equation of private with governmental power.

I can think of three reasons why people equate private and government power. Two of them lie in neglect of the caveat "in the absence of crime or corruption."

In many places in the past, and some today, private individuals and organizations can engage in brute force without restraint. Sometimes governments are just unable to stop pirates and bandits. Sometimes, as with the Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction, those who are supposed to enforce the law don't. This is private power in the sense of physical force, which is quite different from what Harold's discussing.

A more relevant issue is corruption, which I mean in a broader sense than secret back-room deals and bribes. It includes legislation in plain sight to benefit one private interest at the unchosen expense of everyone else, or to apply the law unequally to different people (for instance, telecom immunity). Congress is built on this kind of corruption. Politicians promise that they can bring money into their state by taking it out of the pockets of people in the rest of the country.

This may apply to the "broadcast flag" issue, as cable providers may be able to enforce their way with the help of the law. The anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA may let them legally threaten the makers of non-compliant devices. This would not be a market action, but a corrupt private-public entanglement. In the absence of the DMCA, there would be a market for devices which ignore the broadcast flag; it's not clear (and Harold would know better than I would) whether existing law may suppress this market.

There's a third reason for equating public and private power, which isn't a product of the honest confusion that can stand behind the first two. That is the desire for what belongs to others. People see that someone else has what they want, and they declare themselves entitled to it, objecting to "private power" which prevents them from taking it. I'm not accusing anyone of this in the immediate situation, but it's the most common basis overall for the equation. It's the robber's philosophy, as a famous line from The Threepenny Opera shows: "What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?"

When you regard private and governmental power as the same thing, there are no limits on how much the latter can grow in the name of suppressing the former.