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In my latest essay, I try to list the major points I'm aware of that puncture the progressive narrative on economics, without trying to directly touch on the Culture War's social fronts.
Reality Has a Poorly Recognized Classical Liberal Bias
I think most people here have enough exposure to libertarianism that they are at least aware of these issues (even if they don't agree with them). If you think I missed one or I'm somehow dead wrong please do indicate so.
Very reasonable and straightforward. Markets work well for many economic tasks.
But Classical Liberals don't have a monopoly on markets. China makes good use of markets in their authoritarian nationalist capitalist model. They're not liberal. The Romans had a pretty laissez-faire attitude to markets but supplemented them with aggressive imperialism.
Marketism and laissez-faire works best in economics. Classical liberalism and libertarianism are poor politics because of their openness and inability to develop a strong power base. Say you have a classical liberal state. Who gains? Everyone. But they can all see ways to make more gains by weakening the system. Big business wants to bring in cheap labour, privatize gains in labour price while socializing costs in welfare. They also want to protect domestic markets from foreign competition. Poor people want money from the rich. Middle class people want cozy sinecures. Trade unions want regulations on business and to prevent mechanization. Foreign lobbies want expensive adventurism. Nimbies want nothing to be built. Greens want industry dismantled.
So I don't disagree but if the proposal is more 'classical liberalism' then there has to be some way of developing a classical liberal power base. It doesn't seem to be very stable as an equilibrium, with so many forces with incentives to undermine it. Christianity also has many virtues but we observe it on the decline in the West, see Sunday trading, abortion rules, treatment of adultery, marriage, homosexuality... I can imagine a reasonable, justified argument that Christianity is good, shared faith makes many things easier. But without the 'here's why Christianity is declining and how this trend can be reversed' the call to action seems incomplete.
Of course this is a very big and hard problem. I can't see a way to make classical liberalism work reliably without getting captured by various interests. And a huge party-state to compel obedience like China brings with it new problems.
The crazy thing about markets is that they work so well, even under adverse conditions. The Chinese made some necessary compromises and it worked out pretty well for them.
You do point out a very real challenge I am painfully aware of and what is the underlying motivation of why I would write such an essay. The erosion of (classic) liberalism by progressivism has happened; can we stop it? Or are we in the U.S. doomed to the same eventual fate as the UK?
I have made exactly the same argument you do against Christians saying we need to return to Christianity--if that led us here what good would it do to redo things, even if that were possible? (I'd argue the key difference between classic liberalism, at least the free market economics of it, and Christianity is that the latter is not based on a factual understanding of reality.)
In the U.S., classic liberalism got hammered pretty hard starting during the Great Depression for about 50 years on economics, then we had a few decades of half-decent neoliberalism in both parties, and now both parties are largely past neoliberalism for the indefinite future. MAGAfication on the right may actually negatively polarize the left into becoming more neoliberal again, if we're lucky. #silverlinings
And, though my essay is aimed at progressive failures, I figure my best shot of convincing MAGA types that perhaps they should care about market economics, as the GOP once did, is by trashing progressive failures, not Trump and present antimarket policies.
MAGA is not particularly anti-market, though? It’s anti fiscal conservative which brings its own set of issues but MAGA slashes regulations when it can.
It's anti-international trade.
MAGA is pro-positive balance of trade. Not anti-trade.
The options are to throw sand in the gears or to not do so. MAGA is in favor of the former. You cannot achieve a positive balance of trade with the methods Trump uses, especially not the particular ways Trump uses (Mercantilism doesn't work, but Trump isn't even doing mercantilism right)
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