Moral Markets

Jacob Heilbrunn’s Washington Monthly article “The Great Conservative Crackup” takes on Jeffrey Hart’s new book about American conservatism and National Review. This being Washington Monthly, there’s scads of NR bashing and a distasteful faux-wistfulness for the Buckley-era—about which Heilbrunn would undoubtedly opine on much less kindly were it actually to return. Liberal writers always seem to find room at the table for conservatives who criticize their own movement, especially when the conservatives in question aren’t in much of a position to push for all that icky right-leaning policy. Needless to say, I don’t agree with much of what he writes.

But he does strike an interesting chord in one short passage toward the end:

Conservatives have never been able to reconcile their worship of the almighty free market with its attendant social upheaval. They want unfettered free enterprise, but not all the freedoms that free enterprise brings, such as pornography and other vices. Hart may not be a severe moralist, but he does deplore vulgar taste in the arts, which is another inevitable byproduct of a capitalist economy.

He’s right to suggest some tension there, but the tension is resolved far more easily than many seem to think. I’ve broached this topic before, trading words with Ross Douthat, Michael Brendan Dougherty and others; my views are not secret: Free market economies are not at odds with high moral standards, and those concerned with creating a moral society should push for greater freedom from government intervention. Free market proponents, faced with cries that thriving markets provide incentives for immoral behavior, often respond with a shrug and some sort of mumbling about how it’s the only way to run an economy, and one must accept the good with the bad. Others pretend to be for the free-market but move dangerously far away from it.

Rubbish to all of that, I say. The spread of moral codes works on market principles just like the financial realm. Bringing the government in creates unfair competition with society’s moral institutions.

There are, first of all, many strong arguments about how regulated markets stifle economies, making it far more difficult to increase the amount of wealth in the world and thereby lessen the tolls of poverty. These are obvious—more wealth equals more resources, less poverty, and less physical need—and there are many fantastic economists making these arguments regularly. Instead, I want to focus on the general idea of government-promoted moral systems.

Giving the government the power to regulate moral standards sends the message to the public that the government, not the church, not the family, not the self-help book author, not the humanist association, or the cult leader, not even the individual will, is the proper arbiter of moral correctness. So when churches advocate tougher restrictions on TV content, they’re admitting that what they’re promoting won’t work without the force of law behind it. The precedent is set: churches are ceding their authority to the government, giving away their influence to a secular regime. The more forcefully the church, or whatever civic, social group, advocates socially restrictive laws, the more deeply they embed the mindset that the government is the moral broker. This is supported by how much less integral churches and other social institutions have become to society over the last hundred years while government power has vastly increased.

They’re also reshaping the morals market by tamping down on competing moral views with government regulation. Under normal circumstances, civic groups must compete for moral authority; individuals can choose which is best for them, and the one that works best for the most people will win out. If social groups like churches really believe that what they advocate is best (and as a Christian, that's what I believe), there’s no need to use government to enforce it. Otherwise, they become moral rent-seekers. As with business, this can seem good in the short run, but it destroys the market and is bad for everyone in the long view.

As for vulgar taste in arts, I’m not convinced that’s a problem in the way many seem to think it is. Yes, coarse mass art gets a big boost in a free market economy, but fine art tends to thrive far better in wealthier societies. And if the vulgar mass art didn’t exist (or was less visible), does anyone really believe the masses would take up refined culture instead? No, laments about loss of high culture in a free market economy are usually just a reaction of the cultured to the increased visibility of crudity. Bawdy entertainment is fine—as long as the elites don’t have to look at it.