Can Libertarians Make Free Markets Cool?

by Gerard Emershaw

Social freedoms are cool. It is not hard to get Americans of all backgrounds to cheer for social freedoms. When reading books such as Nineteen Eight Four, Brave New World, or It Can’t Happen Here or when watching movies such as V for Vendetta, Brazil, A Scanner Darkly, The Hunger Games, Equilibrium, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Running Man, Serenity, or Soylent Green, it is natural for any American to cheer the freedom loving and oppressed protagonists and jeer the totalitarian antagonists. However, economic freedom is another thing entirely. Many lovers of the natural rights to life and liberty scratch their heads at the idea of the right to property or even scoff at it.

For whatever reason, many just do not consider free markets and economic freedoms to be sexy. In fact, many on the left—especially Millennials—consider free markets to be a bad thing. They view them as oppressive, racist, sexist, classist, etc. It does not help that pop culture and art offer little compelling entertainment which does for economic freedom what something like The Hunger Games does for social freedoms. One might point to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. However, while a devoted group of readers practically worship the novel, many are daunted by its length. While the novel’s concept is undeniably original and intriguing, many readers are put off by its flat, one dimensional characters, its pretentious dialogue, and its clunky prose. It does not help that the first two of a planned trilogy of movie adaptations of the novel have been massive critical and commercial failures. While the novel certainly deserves better, these films are low budget disasters which look like they ought to be direct to video. Making matters worse is that the cast has changed in each of the films. Imagine if different actors had played Luke, Han, Leia, and Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. It would not have been a compelling inducement to see the films.

So, how can people be educated about the importance and necessity of economic freedom? There is a mountain of empirical evidence that shows that the freer the economy of a nation, the wealthier the people of that nation. Unfortunately, this does not seem to convince the skeptics. They will always have a Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, etc. to point to as models of how they think the American economy ought to be structured.

It is often difficult or a libertarian to understand why so many Americans are unimpressed with the idea of the free market. How can anyone be truly free if he or she is not economically free? Even if a nation has every social freedom that one can imagine, if that nation has a centrally controlled economy, then there is no freedom. If the government can control the economy, it can control every financial transaction that each individual makes. It can take away any individual’s assets. It can starve any individual. Just as one is a slave if he or she does not have social freedom, one is also a slave without economic freedom. This is not a matter of simply being a greedy economic royalist who does not wish to pay his or her “fair share.” But how can libertarians convincingly spread the idea that free markets are a necessary condition for true freedom?