\n\n... there\u00e2\u0080\u0099s a very particular story ... embodied since the late nineteenth century in what Tomasi calls High Liberalism.\u00c2\u00a0 The High-Liberal political philosophers ... rely, against Kant, on a factual story which they take to be so obvious as to not require defense.\u00c2\u00a0 I claim that on the contrary their master narrative is mistaken, as anthropology or economics or history. ...
\nThe story is, in a few brief mottos to stand for a rich intellectual tradition since the 1880s:\u00c2\u00a0 Modern life is complicated, and so we need government to regulate.\u00c2\u00a0 Government can do so well, and will not be regularly corrupted.\u00c2\u00a0 Since markets fail very frequently the government should step in to fix them.\u00c2\u00a0 Without a big government ee cannot do certain noble things (Hoover Dam, the Interstates, NASA).\u00c2\u00a0 Antitrust works.\u00c2\u00a0 Businesses will exploit workers if government regulation and union contracts do not intervene.\u00c2\u00a0 Unions got us the 40-hour week.\u00c2\u00a0 Poor people are better off chiefly because of big government and unions.\u00c2\u00a0 The USA was never laissez faire.\u00c2\u00a0 Internal improvements were a good idea, and governmental from the start.\u00c2\u00a0 Profit is not a good guide.\u00c2\u00a0 Consumers are usually misled.\u00c2\u00a0 Advertising is bad.
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\nNo.\u00c2\u00a0 The master narrative of High Liberalism is mistaken factually.\u00c2\u00a0 Externalities do not imply that a government can do better.\u00c2\u00a0 Publicity does better than inspectors in restraining the alleged desire of businesspeople to poison their customers.\u00c2\u00a0 Efficiency is not the chief merit of a market economy: innovation is.\u00c2\u00a0 Rules arose in merchant courts and Quaker fixed prices long before governments started enforcing them.
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Fantastic article. Read the whole thing. Via Factual Free-Market Fairness | Bleeding Heart Libertarians.
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