Tue Jan 7 00:41:53 2020
<9e126bf3> <https://acton.org/pub/commentary/2017/11/07/edmund-burkes-conservative-case-free-markets>
— Edmund Burke’s conservative case for free markets
— It’s hardly a secret that free markets have fallen out of favor among conservatives throughout the West in recent years. Whether it’s Britain’s Theresa May, Germany’s Angela Merkel, or Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull, many center-right politicians have quietly re-embraced some of the economically-interventionist polices that prevailed between the 1940s and the 1970s. Likewise, important segments of conservative intellectual opinion, such as the American journal First Things, have substantially qualified their formerly strong support for market economies. There’s many reasons for this. One is growing worries about some of the apparent social and cultural effects of free markets. Another is the undeniable spread of economic nationalism, fueled by the sense that free trade has undermined entire communities’ well-being. Nor did the 2008 financial crisis help the cause of free markets inasmuch as economic liberalization was perceived to be the prime culprit. I use words like “apparent,” “sense,” and “perceived” because, in many of these cases, what matters is perception. The reality is often rather different. Unfortunately such realities—such as the extent to which the 2008 recession was facilitated by factors such as flawed monetary policy and government efforts to socially engineer the American housing market—don’t get anywhere near the attention they deserve among some conservative skeptics of markets.
