PITTSBURGH (TNS) — I was surprised to hear the three men I was talking to praise the Danish welfare state. A friend had invited me to the opening reception of a conference being held in Pittsburgh by a conservative group, one that once had “individualist” in its name.
The three were ardent believers in the free market, though broadly humane in their reasons. They generally opposed anything the government did to intervene in economic affairs, but they really liked the Dane’s generous unemployment benefits, far more generous than ours, because, and I was not so surprised to hear this, the benefits made it easier to fire people.
They believed that government is generally bad when it tries to help people in need, because that produces more people in need, but good when it helps business. I thought of them when I saw Jeff Bezos’ surprising announcement.
BEZOS CHANGES THE WASHINGTON POST
Jeff Bezos, wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, owner of Amazon (a money-maker) and The Washington Post (a money-loser), announced “a change coming” to his newspaper’s editorial pages. “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberty and free markets. We’ll cover other topics, too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
He says the web will take care of other points of view.
“I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. … And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else,” he continued. “Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.” As with any broad sounds-good ideological claim, its truth depends on what he means by the words, and I think he has a very narrow definition.
I think this partly because he describes his point of view as “underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us to fill that void.” That he believes his view underserved, and I think he sincerely believes that, suggests what means by his two ideals.
The American press, a thoroughly capitalist press, believes in personal freedom and the free market, and argues only over how it should operate, with how much regulation and welfare. The one view not well represented in American newspapers is strict or hard — I would say social darwinist adjacent — libertarianism.
LIBERTY AND MARKETS
What does Bezos mean in terms of policy, the point at which ideals actually matter? Does, for example, a government increase personal liberty and serve the free market by giving out Danish-level unemployment benefits?
My companions believed it did, but most ardent free marketers don’t, including, from what we can tell of his views from his scattered remarks, Mr. Bezos. His company may offer good benefits compared to others, but as a business decision, not as a belief or value about how those with power must treat those under them.
Is personal and economic freedom increased by regulation protecting people from dangerous working conditions and overlong hours, and protecting children from having to go down into the mines or into the mill, conditions Bezos’ 19th and early 20th century peers believed not only normal, but just? Outside the real barbarians, libertarians concede that employers should be limited in some way, but I think their and Bezos’ limits will be as narrow as possible without being banned from polite society.
To ask the question a different way: What does it mean that many or most Americans can’t fully exercise their personal liberties without government aid? How free are you if you have to work very long hours to live in a poor apartment in a neighborhood with poor schools, dependent on public transportation or a car always threatening to break down, unable to afford medical care when you or your family’s sick?
Doesn’t government aid serve personal liberty and by helping people become more productive, the free market? I’m hoping Bezos’ answer is yes but I’m pretty sure it’s no.
I think we know what Jeff Bezos means by “personal liberty” and “free markets”: a society that lets him make as much money as he can, that enables him to control as many people’s lives as he needs to, and that requires nothing of him that he does not want to do.
HE READ IT IN THE NEWSPAPER
The English journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, who flourished during the middle of the last century, began his career on a newspaper owned by the press magnate Lord Beaverbrook, who frequently told the editors to print items he wanted to read. (Trivia for those who like it: Muggeridge and the novelist Anthony Powell arranged Orwell’s funeral.)
Muggeridge was once instructed to include in a story in the “Diary” section a paragraph saying that a lung disease of which a famous playwright was dying was called “old man’s friend” because it didn’t hurt.
“The reason was clear,” he wrote in his autobiography, “Chronicles of Wasted Time”: “Beaverbrook was an asthmatic, expected to die of a similar complaint, and wanted to be reassured that it made for an easy death by reading it in the Diary.”
It would be hard to resist, I suppose, if you owned a newspaper, say The Washington Post, making sure that it told you every day, with satisfying editorial unanimity, that the libertarian economics by which you’ve conquered the world is undoubtedly a wonderful thing, making you a wonderful person.
The problem, of course, is that it isn’t true.
(David Mills is the deputy editorial page editor and a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, dmills@post-gazette.com.)
