Middle thoughts on the limitations of the market

When I was in high school, I probably would have told you I was a libertarian, classical liberal, or capitalist. Recently a coworker told me that the reason libertarians don't get many votes is because people don't know what they are; when you explain libertarianism to people, everybody agrees with it.

I think libertarianism is perniciously idealistic. Free markets aren't enough to care for the poor, the disabled, unwanted children, the environment, or public education. It's easy to become disenchanted with governments and their often-destructive policies, but other policies really do promote the public welfare, and the stand-out countries in the world provide public services.

On the other hand, I recognize the power of the market mechanism--when properly applied. For instance, a cap-and-trade system can reduce pollutants or become an unstable, ineffectual financial game. Similarly, a good environment for business combined with universal education can quickly grow an economy.

When I stop and think, I'm also sympathetic to libertarian accusations that non-minimal-government types are wrongly imposing their values on other people. What right do I have to advocate policy against consumerism when it's what so many people choose? (I originally wrote "choose freely," but a choice is always dependent on context--including cultural and institutional necessities that one might hate, not to mention all the forces that guide and warp one's perceptions.)

Of course, I do have a case: Consumerism is causing and will continue to cause suffering and deaths because of its environmental impacts. If stuff was free or close to it, I'd love it. If the costs fell solely on the individuals choosing to participate in the transaction, I'd be fine with it. But instead they fall upon the entire world, especially the least empowered, the poor, the ill, the non-human, and future generations. This knowledge came before and drove my dislike of consumerism, which was only then joined by my own disgust with the shallowness, loneliness, and pointlessness of my American life.

I look forward to learning more about libertarian thinkers' ideas. I think they have a great deal to add to the public discussion and to future policy decisions (if only we could get past the damage conservatives do!). Economic efficiency is good in many contexts, personal liberty in even more.

I don't know anything about the philosophy, but I've gotten the idea that my beliefs tend toward "libertarian socialism". Unfortunately, another thing that I think the libertarians get right most of the time is the value of private property--people are more likely to protect the things they have a stake in or a sense of ownership over, spoil the things they don't.

I enjoy having no sweeping political/economic ideology that I can put a name to. There are certainly many political ideologies I ascribe to, including many I've never noticed, but I have no faith in one system or other that will bring us to utopia. Lack of such faith both strikes me as realistic and relieves me of the emotional friction experienced by someone possessed of answers the mainstream don't ask for.

Election Day-After

U.S. midterm elections were yesterday. I voted for the first time. In 2008 I wasn't old enough, but I lived on a college campus along with a lot of first-time voters feverish for Obama. Lacking their optimism, I was still willing to go along, happy to see an African-American elected president, happy to see McCain/Palin lose.

But the morning after the elections still sucked, with me wandering down to the student center to see the strained faces of students from California whose marriage rights had just been revoked by their own mean-spirited neighbors.

Today I checked the news to see another string of deaths in Iraq, legacy of America's failed politics, and a defeat for drug decriminalization, promising more wars and unrest in foreign countries, a triumph for private prisons and racial discrimination in the US.

Republicans won the House and significant seats across the country, a frustrating shift to the right to those of us far left of the current government. For me, even more frustrating is the reason: Dissatisfaction with the poor recovery from the economic crisis the current administration inherited.

I don't agree that economic growth is an important goal.

The economy is a means to several ends: Distribution of necessary resources, attainment of things people want, and giving people something to do, among and overlapping with others. Right now, I think the marginal utility of economic growth is significantly less than the marginal cost.

What I'm trying to say is, I'm an environmentalist.

Growth is (a) unsustainable, and (b) incredibly destructive. These two combined mean that the more we produce and consume now, the more we hurt later on. And the more non-humans and poor humans who aren't responsible for this mess also hurt. I find this morally repugnant.

Additionally, I don't think consumption makes us happier. Because we insist on hiring full-time workers for 40 hours a week or else relying on temps who don't get the pay or the benefits they need to live well, we need to keep producing more and more as production becomes less labor-intensive. Ergo we need to convince people they need to buy more and more even after their demand has been met. Is it any surprise that job recovery is slow when we don't actually need 40 hours of labor a week from everyone in the labor pool of this country?

We can grow quality of life without increasing worldwide production or transportation. We could start by setting up a true socialized health care system, but Americans didn't like the idea. We could decrease the work week, but Americans wouldn't like the idea. We could require international firms to comply with fair trade practices before we bought anything from them, but China wouldn't like the idea. We could start pricing carbon emissions, but, yeah, both Americans and free trade types would get into a tizzy about that.

So my beliefs are firmly in the counter-culture, while my life is not. I boycott the products of factory farms, I use a combination of biking, walking, public transit, and carpooling instead of owning a car, but even though those choices greatly reduce my individual environmental footprint, it doesn't seem like enough. And neither choice is primarily for the environment. I want to step away from frivolous consumerism, want to dig into a place and make long-term connections with the community. Yet I feel rootless and shallow in my relationships with place and my fellow humans, more so with the remnants of the environment that spring up between concrete slabs.

I don't know how to reach my goal. My life is inherently unstable at this point in time: I'm a student. I don't know what my employment opportunities will be after I graduate, where I'll live, whether I'll even then have the sense of security in an income able to support my desired lifestyle. But people do it, live in the same town for years or even decades, so perhaps I shouldn't worry so much. Some people even live in the same house, which is what I would want--although really I want to find a fertile plot of land and build on it an energy-efficient abode from recycled and natural materials. I want there to be rodents and birds and spiders and many species of native and cultivated plants.

But I also want a social life with people who accept my radical ideas, and are those two hopes compatible?

Capitalists would tell me that my environmental tendencies are a personal preference. And at this point in the world's mess, maybe they are. Personal changes in consumption aren't going to save us, and there are quite possibly too many people for everyone to live sustainably. More importantly, too many people are wrapped up in ideologies hostile or oblivious to prioritizing the environment. Fighting the environmental battle now seems like a lost cause overall, even though possible future victories are very important bandaids. They will determine which ecological and human communities collapse, how many, how badly, and how soon.

So the environment is, to my knowledge, the most important issue facing the world today. Its recovery is far, far more important than that of the economy.