BERRY, THE FREE MARKET, AND WHAT I BELIEVE: Welcome to all who came here looking for my frustrated assault on two Wendell Berry essays. I suggest you start here and continue on to the next post, which is the big one. I decided to write a postscript, since it’s always easier to tear down someone else’s position than to state your own, and I may have given the impression that Berry and I disagree (even) more than we do. So here’s a partial list of what I do and don’t believe about the free market, globalization, trade, and economics. It’s framed as a reply to Berry, which explains the emphasis placed on points I would usually just assume.

Looking down on empty streets, all she can see

Are the dreams made solid–are the dreams made real.

All of the buildings and all of the cars

Were once just a dream in somebody’s head.

She pictures the broken glass, pictures the steam,

Pictures a soul with no leak at the seam….

I believe that the rich have obligations to the poor. I believe that fulfilling those obligations is a lot harder than paying taxes to support a welfare state.

I believe that everyone should read this, take it to heart, and try to live up to its severe challenge: “Wealth should be seen less for its own qualities than for the human misery it stands for. The large rooms of which you are so proud are in fact your shame. They are big enough to hold parties, and also big enough to shut out the voice of the poor. The poor man cries before your house, and you pay no attention. There is your brother, naked, crying, and you stand there in a dilemma over a choice of carpets.” (St Ambrose of Milan.) I don’t believe that making money is evil, that rich people are necessarily greedy, or that confiscatory taxation helps the poor.

I believe that corporations–especially when allied with repressive governments–can cause terrible suffering. Many corporations have profited and continue to profit from human misery. I do not take these facts to be an indictment of all corporations, or all governments. The best way to remedy these abuses will depend on the situation–which is why the specifics Berry shuns are so crucial. Journalists, watchdog groups, and free-traders must constantly be vigilant, hunting out abuses and exposing the abusers to legal penalties, boycotts, trade penalties (in rare cases), international condemnation, or whatever strategy is most likely to be successful. (We shouldn’t, however, assume that corporations are abusive just because someone says so.)

I believe that the US should more vigorously enforce its existing laws against the importation of goods made with slave labor. I would especially call customs agents’ attention to goods from Communist China, many of which are made in the laogai or Chinese gulag.

I believe that those who control technology and the means of production, in general, control the flow of information and opinion. That’s why those means should be widely distributed throughout a society, as generally happens in a free-market economy. “Economic democracy,” without very strong liberal protections for the minority, is just another name for tyranny, because the person who controls who rents what, who buys what, and who sells what can also control who meets where, who publishes what, and who reads what. The existence of Mother Jones, The Nation, Wendell Berry’s publishers, the many websites that post his essays, and the countless bookstores that stock his titles are benefits of the free market.

I believe that voluntary poverty is a great good. Pursuing trade policies that keep other people poor is not.

I believe that subsidies to or supports for corporations are violations of the free market, not expressions of it.

My default positions: Free trade and technological innovation are good. Like most people who hold those default positions, I believe that there can be exceptions. (Let’s start with selling oneself into slavery–bad–and work forward from there.) Support for a free market does not require the ideology that everything is for sale, that the only valid motive is the profit motive, and that efficiency should rule all–or even most–human affairs.

I believe that this country has lost a degree of necessary confidence in the afterlife, the judgment of God, and absolute universal moral standards. This loss of confidence has warped our politics–we find it hard to protect non-material goods at the expense of material goods. We are too ready to sacrifice liberty, loyalty, responsibility, and life for comfort, health, wealth, or security. However, this loss of confidence is not irreversible–and in fact, although there have been both good and bad developments recently, in general Americans have been slowly regaining this confidence for at least a decade. As the Magic 8-Ball says, “Signs point to yes!”

Whatever the benefits of an agrarian life, I have never yet seen a defense of agrarianism that did not require socialism in order to sustain itself. And socialism spells the end of the very independence and loyalties that agrarians so eloquently praise.

I believe that cities are among the most beautiful things on earth. I love New York more than ever.