Populism, Markets, and Walmart
posted by Nate Oman
I have a friend who is something of a populist. A political philosopher and sometime resident of the rural south, he is in favor of things like a living wage, dry laws, prayer at town meetings, and a high protective tariff. In particular, provided that there is substantial support by “the people,” he is willing to support all sorts of measures that are fairly authoritarian by the standards of traditional liberal political theory. Needless to say, his thinking is much, much more nuanced than I have presented it here, and he can talk about Rousseau, Marx, and Herder is all sorts of sophisticated and interesting ways. He doesn’t, however, much like markets, and in this he is typical of many self-described populists. I can’t help but thinking that there is something odd about this.
In a real sense populism is all about taking expressed preferences seriously. The populist response to liberal concerns about the distinction between the right and the good, public reasons, and all of the other conceptual hedges against overweening democracy is to point out that much of this stuff is simply elitist clap trap, a set of spurious distinctions designed to insulate what affluent and well-educated coastal populations happen to like from the rawer, more authentic sensibilities of the heart land. “Down with it!” the populists argue. People ought to be able to live in a society that actually reflects the values and commitments that they have, rather than one where the expression of those values has been manipulated by elite categories into a more antiseptic form that conforms to elite sensibilities rather than popular sensibilities.
Markets are also about taking expressed preferences seriously. They are frequently not pretty. Both Britney Spears and Walmart are products of the market, and both seem to satisfy expressed preferences. Nor are these preferences the atomized, individualistic things that the heirs of Rousseau like to impute to liberals. Price is about the aggregation of preferences, and it is price that allocates goods within the market. Hence, the desire for cheap stuff — and with it a bit more real disposable income — is, like school prayer and dry laws, an authentic expression of the will of the people. Indeed, given that participation in politics is sporadic at best, while participation in the market is ubiquitous, if anything prices have a greater claim to expressing the General Will than plebiscites.
July 17, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Posted in: Politics
Print This Post
Responses (12)
Frank - July 17, 2006 at 1:23 pm
As for prices and plebiscites: I haven’t heard of any plebiscites where some individuals had, say, 1,000 times the voting power of others. But buying power is often that unequally distributed.
As for Rousseau’s “general will:” I don’t think much modern political theory is trying to figure out how to instantiate that concept. But there is a lot of effort toward establishing ground rules for fair “discursive will formation,” ala Habermas and the deliberativists.
Nate Oman - July 17, 2006 at 1:38 pm
Frank: Obviously a valid point. The question comes in terms of comparative advantage. There are lots of problems with the ability of markets to aggregate preferences. I just find it odd that given the imperfections of elections they are always assumed (by some) to be superior aggregators.
Chris Bell - July 17, 2006 at 1:46 pm
And what should we do when the people have conflicting desires?
When they want (and buy) low-cost Wal-Mart imports while simultaneously calling for high import tariffs?
Chris Bell - July 17, 2006 at 1:50 pm
As a side note, economists have started to argue that trade tariffs are bad whether other countries have them or not.
Ergo, the US should unilaterally drop its trade barriers, even if other countries refuse to do so.
This is extremely interesting, extremely compelling, and is going to go absolutely nowhere in American politics.
ac - July 17, 2006 at 2:29 pm
Buying from Walmart and supporting tariffs are not conflicting desires. Together they are a preference of the form, “I prefer X if everyone must live with X.” In this case, X is the restricted availability of cheap Chinese imports. Markets do not discover these sorts of preferences.
Chris Bell - July 17, 2006 at 2:39 pm
I agree with you that markets can’t discover these sorts of preferences, which was my point. Individuals can personally “rank” their preferences, but it’s hard to take large-scale market data and do any sort of governing based upon it.
I mean that they are “conflicting desires” in that you can’t have both. You can’t have high tariffs and low-cost clothing, for example.
Since both are popular, we are left with little guidance.
Frank - July 17, 2006 at 5:34 pm
To Chris: yes, but people can have preferences about their preferences, or metapreferences. There might be someone who both a) wants lots of mint chocolate chip ice cream and b) wants to lose weight. Luckily, b) is the metapreference and keeps him from buying the ice cream when he’s at the store, so in a moment of weakness a) doesn’t kick in and send him to the refrigerator ala Bridget Jones.
Here, the tariffs might be seen as a metapreference for forms of autarky.
I’m not endorsing the tariffs, just saying that perhaps the electoral preference deserves respect on more than the egalitarian grounds mentioned in my first comment.
Of course, one might say the vote for the tariff is less a principled economic policy decision than a fit of xenophobia. By the same token, one might say that buying the cheapest clothes is less reasoned frugality than an unthinking, narcotized conformity (or a decision essentially forced by one’s straitened finances). I see no reason to accord either the vote or the buy some high level of respect without a sense of the motives behind them.
Dave Hoffman - July 17, 2006 at 10:15 pm
Nate: There is a nice little essay on this topic, in an analogue form, in today’s times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/movies/18crit.html?8dpc
Roel - July 18, 2006 at 4:30 am
Pardon my European ignorance, but what are ‘dry laws’? Thanks.
Nate Oman - July 18, 2006 at 9:46 am
Laws banning the sale of alchohol. They are fairly common on the local (generally county) level in some regions of the south and midwest.
David Giesen - July 30, 2006 at 10:54 pm
I find the intersection of markets and tariffs interesting when it comes to use of nature. Instances of nature such as land (including the land under cities) and mineral/petroleum resources (prior to extraction) hold value for wholly aggregate market demand reasons; that is, unlike things made by people which hold value reflecting particular applications of human labor which itself is demanded, land/nature has market value owing to the potential opportunity for the mere application of human labor. In short, economic rent of land, when privatized, is equatable to a private tariff levied upon the rest of humanity as a condition of using a natural (non-human made) opportunity to function as a human.
Russell Arben Fox - October 12, 2006 at 4:16 pm
I’m the friend Nate was talking about. I didn’t know Nate wrote this at the time–thanks for the kind words!–but then I wasn’t doing much blogging over the summer. Anyway, I’ve actually finally written something directly on populism and Wal-Mart; I suppose I might as well toss out a link, even though the discussion is three months old. Here it is; enjoy.
Leave a Reply