In the penultimate chapter
of his book The Better Angels of Our
Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Steven Pinker attempts to bring together
the tenuous linking of increased free market libertarianism and increased
peace:
"To think like an economist is to accept the
theory of gentle commerce from classical liberalism, which touts the
positive-sum payoffs of exchange and its knock-on benefit of expansive networks
of cooperation. That sets it in opposition to populist, nationalist, and
communist mindsets that see the world's wealth as zero-sum and infer that the
enrichment of one group must come at the expense of another."
In my case, he's pushing
at an already open door with a comment like that, but then I'm not one of the
people that needs convincing - I mean, as I've blogged about a couple of times
now, it's pretty evident if you look the nations that most espouse economic
freedom, democracy and liberalism, they are pretty much always the most
peaceable countries too.
As well as the obvious
point - that free trade is underwritten by co-operation, empathy, and a stable
rule of law that protects individual rights - what Pinker means by 'thinking like an
economist' is probably that people well versed in economics are not so heavily sullied
with the divisional myths that pervade the left; like for example, class
stratification, wanting to forcibly confiscate wealth from higher earners (the
higher the taxes the better), enviously resenting those who are successful,
failing to note when value is being created, falling for the fixed pie fallacy
and feeling a false sense of entitlement for what others have acquired,
thinking that the economy is zero-sum, lamenting when other more competitive
industries prove to be more efficient than industries in their own country, and
treating others as less important if they happen to belong to a country outside
of their own geographical borders.
The link between peace and
the free market is tenuous, but that's only because the entirety of our global
interactions, past and present, amounts to a vast nexus of tenuous and complex
correlatives. And it's not the first time that we've talked
about it.
