Protectionism and the Free Market

Adam Smith advocated for laissez faire capitalism, but even he knew certain minimal protections for the workers and for the consumer would be best. The real intent of laissez faire capitalism is not to let big corporations stomp on private consumers, but to create a most beneficial and fair market for the private person, where the equal and just layer of competition will create a realm where the best products make it to the top; and are produced via consumers voting with their dollars. The best product, moreover, is judged not by any external standard of wanton exchange, but simply by whatever best benefits the consumer, as judged by—once again: voting with their dollars. This requires the elimination of unfair regulation, but also the safeguard of an honest and fair market where all consumers and businesses can exchange commodities and services without fear of foul play.

Saying this has the tendency to excite great outrage from the libertarian crowd, who treats even the most minimal of regulations on the free terra nullius of economic exchange as tantamount to the most vile and heinous of grievances. I would say to my libertarian friends to not forget that the very purpose of liberty and liberalism in general is to safeguard the free movement of all persons involved; and that the mere existence of any regulation does not deter this aim. Certainly, some regulations do, and these are to be condemned.

But regulation in its chief aim is the very purpose of government. Were it not at all necessary to regulate anything, government wouldn't be necessary! And the freest and most liberty-minded of societies would be those resembling anarchies. But don't forget that complete and unlimited freedom—the freedom to do vile and unchecked things—is just as much of a threat to liberty as too much government. The whole point of establishing government is to secure humanity from the threats of unchecked liberty from vile people in a natural setting.

So while too much government regulation is obviously a very palpable and severe threat to liberty, in some very real sense too little regulation is an even greater threat. If that was not true then government would never have to be established. Government is established precisely because as big of a threat as government tyranny is, anarchical tyranny is even worse. And there are some more extreme libertarians who would disagree with even this, viewing any and all established government as an infringement on man's natural liberty—no matters its unanimous consensus in certain groups to whom it pertains. This, surely, goes too far: because after all government is nothing more than the enforced natural will of the people; as long as men have wills, which they always ought to, government axiomatically exists.

But the group to whom I am really speaking is the considerably larger and more influential crowd of individuals who adore the idea of free market capitalism as originally founded and formally defined by Adam Smith. Yet these people have lost sight of what a free market is. A free market is like a free society. A free market does not mean there are no regulations whatsoever. Just as a free society does not mean there are no laws whatsoever. Just as in society, you are free—yet not free to kill your neighbor without cause, nor menace people into terrible submission. You cannot do similar things in a free market. Adam Smith's laissez faire capitalism forbade, for example, corporations from overworking their employees, and it advocated for certain protections on contracts and agreements, to ensure people could not defraud themselves after making a bargain.

Even the original founder of the free market was against a totally free market. And I cannot see how anyone would not be in favor of at least these restrictions and regulations. No reasonable man would protest at a law forbidding murder as a restriction on freedom. At the same time, people compare even the slightest and most reasonable restrictions on trade—which are meant to spur greater freedom—as adjacent to the most obnoxious regulations on trade that have ever been conceived. The two are wholly distinct.

Now, the precise "what" and "how" of protectionism versus open trade is a matter, I perceive, of some intense debate. Yet it must at minimum be acknowledged that a free market does contain, even in its most free state, some minimal restrictions on trade, like having to uphold contracts and not willfully defrauding or taking advantage of consumers, or workers. The extent to how far this can go is a matter of some debate, I perceive, yet the fact that it must involve some restrictions, cannot be debated. To deny that is to deny the original concept of a free market in its entirety, and to advocate instead for something more closely approximating an anarchical market, which—in its chaos and despair—can scarcely be called free.

Not every restriction on trade is left-wing policy. Minimal and reasonable restrictions meant to secure the free market (and open exchange) are necessarily right-wing. I say this, because some people will argue against stances like mine as being inherently leftist. These people will say that just because I advocate for a simple regulation, that it is a left-wing policy. Yet it's not the case. That is a non-argument. Even the original, right-wing ideal of laissez faire capitalism acknowledged some limitations. For example, having a limitation on defrauding consumers, so that if you make a contract or agreement, you have to honor it—that is not a left-wing policy. A generally free market does not mean no restrictions. It means reasonable and minimal restrictions in order to spur open trade and fair competition. And a restriction that is solely of this nature is not left-wing. Not every restriction is left-wing. It has to do with the intent and nature of the restriction.

If the restriction is made to unfairly limit the market, or distribute resources on the people's behalf, then it is left-wing. But a restriction made to protect the grounds of open exchange, and to make it safer and fairer for trade to take place, is a right-wing restriction. There are some people who think that any restriction is leftist when that's misinformed. It just is. What a restriction seeks to achieve determines whether it is left or right wing. And such thinking to the contrary is predicated on a mis-formulation of what laissez faire capitalism is.

Laissez faire capitalism, once again, is about minimal and freedom-based restrictions. It does not do away with restrictions in their entirety. And restrictions, at their core, are not an axiomatically left-wing position.

A fairer argument stems from calling such restrictions liberal, as opposed to some other label. This is more accurate, yet the free market is only classically liberal. If you mean this, then absolutely; yes. The free market is not postliberal, nor to be equated with the leftist's definition of liberalism. If you mean classical, center-right liberalism, then yes.

But that is scarcely a definition that should have to be made. All of the American right in general is predicated upon center-right classical liberalism, and the ideals of Johne Locke and the Founders. To have to clarify that reasonable restrictions are classically liberal, just gets us weirdly in the nature of history without any point. While it is true I have brought up history here, it is only to correct the errors some have made and to show what these ideas really mean in their first formulation. But when someone says that they believe in a free market yet some minimal restrictions, it should not have to be clarified that this is a classically liberal position. Not if that is all that is said, and no errors have been made. Bringing up history without a point is meaningless for making progress. And I'd like to leave our discussions of history and tradition behind to create new history and tradition.

I've brought it up now to correct historical errors others have made, and to provide guidance. When that guidance is already present, it is a waste of time to re-present it. So clarifying that laissez faire capitalism is classically liberal, when that should be fairly obvious, is simply a waste of time when that person brought it up without mis-referencing it. There are those on the right who want to bring differences and nuance into things that are actually quite simple. Don't do that.