I’ve been reading Dean Baker’s The Conservative Nanny State, which, in between joyfully slapping conservatives upside the head, wrestles with how to talk about the relationship between government and market.
Here’s Baker’s basic argument:
the nanny state conservatives have been incredibly successful in structuring the political debate over the last quarter century. They have laid out a framework in which they are perceived as wanting the market to control major areas of the economy and society, while their liberal and progressive opponents want the government to take control. The nanny state conservatives have succeeded in having key forms of government intervention that shaped the market pulled off the table, so that they are never discussed. The liberal/progressive opposition is then left to cry for the helping hand of government to reverse market outcomes, rather than trying to reconfigure the rules to produce a different set of outcomes.(p.14)
The Nanny State conservative strategy works in part because liberals and progressives have bought into it:
Many people have become comfortable with the framing “we like the government, they like the market,” but it is both wrong and politically ineffective. (p. 108)
If we are going to dump the conservative frame for talking about the government and the market, what do we use instead? Baker says, think of the market as a river:
The market is an incredibly powerful force. Good policy seeks to harness it in ways that produce desirable social outcomes. It is much easier to have the river flow in the right direction, then try to block its path and have it flow backwards. The nanny state conservatives have spent the last quarter century putting in place a set of policies and rules that ensures the river flows in a way that sends income upwards. If these rules are not challenged, then it will be impossible to design policies that ensure that the bulk of the population enjoys a decent standard of living. (p. 107)
I like where Dean is heading. But I don’t think the metaphor of the market as a river will do the job.
First, without any human intervention, rivers naturally flow in a particular direction. Rivers don’t need the Army Corps of Engineers. But capitalism — or at least capitalism as anyone in their right mind would want it — doesn’t exist without government.
Second, rivers aren’t actors in their own right (at least not that we are aware of). It’s not like a few streams that feed into the river can start tweeting each other, “f this, let’s make our own dm river!” Or that the left bank of a river can decide, I’m tired of the right riverbank always getting the better view of sunrises, I’m going to force us to make a right turn up ahead so I get an equal view. Not so for commercial banks.
Do I have a better metaphor yet? No, so it’s hard for me to be too critical. And it’s a really fun book; Dean is a man who knows how to swing a cudgel and have a good time doing it. Overall, it’s a useful step in the right direction of creating a new model for talking about the economy.
NOTE: Baker has a great answer to the question, if conservatives like government, how come they screw it up every time they get into power? Baker says their incompetence isn’t a sign that conservatives don’t care about government, it’s a sign of what government they care about.
conservatives are enthusiastic supporters of the big government policies that send income flowing upward, and they are quite effective in running the sectors of government that bring about this end…. They might not do a good job in saving the people of New Orleans from a hurricane, but saving poor people is not the agenda of the nanny state conservatives. Their agenda is making sure that no one mass produces copies of Windows without Microsoft’s permission.
