The (re)Birth of Democracy
In the 18th Century, an established, respectable nation collapsed into violent and dramatic revolution and gave birth to a democracy. In the absence of monarchy, the land reborn would be ruled by the consent of the governed, the very will of the people. The democracy was malformed, though. Constant revolution and murder, that same will of the people, ruled the land reborn. This is the democracy from which Alexis de Tocqueville departed, and which he held in mind as he ventured to the peculiar democracy in newly formed United States of America.
Where the ashes of the French monarchy cultivated a spiteful democracy, de Tocqueville witnessed in the United States a democracy in which citizens flourished without tending to one another or suffering the good intentions of another seeking to tend to them. There existed in the new democracy of America some set of social institutions which deferred to the benefits of a democracy while castigating the debilitating potential for spite as witnessed in France.
Nearly two-and-a-half centuries have since passed. The new democracy wears its age bitterly. Of those institutions that promoted the benefits of democracy while safeguarding against the vile potential of democracy, many are frail in their age or so laden that they cannot support any longer the democracy that thrives.
A brief Analogy
The very skin on our body becomes frail with age, thin like paper and prone to tear. Necessary and important, weak skin portends the end of a person. If it cannot keep at bay what should remain outside, and retain the sanctity of the closed system of the body’s circulatory and inherent-regulatory order, then an end is soon in sight.
To that end, the body of our democracy in America, which delighted and terrified de Tocqueville, is in great danger. The barrier is paper thin and, in many places, torn and ripped. While the germs thrive, the body continues at a fevered pace building and rebuilding– it’s life as usual. Everyone stays busy at their local, specific tasks. Meanwhile, the germs invade the body, quietly and without notice, and begin to impede its work (though they appear to benefit the thing: “See! All the busy-ness and “productivity” that this once lazy body is now undertaking!”).
A Not-so-Free Market
There is little more dangerous to a thriving society than a successful capitalist who crosses into statism. We know this as cronyism. This produces inefficiencies, for sure, but also dehumanization and social retrogression. All of the progress witnessed by de Tocqueville during his limited visit to the nascent United States in the early 1800s are undermined by cronyism. All of the institutions which support and promote the good in democracy are waylaid when one engages state powers for personal gain.
We must be clear that when this occurs, we are no longer discussing a free market. The market has been captured by the state via collusion with a former free market participant. The treachery here is not that the state has infiltrated the free market. It is the travesty that all continue to refer to the thing as a “free market”. It is a captured market, a market subdued by subtle and clever merchant kings. Worse still, is that it persists. This new institution in society (and it is an institution), as with all institutions, seeks as a chief aim to persist in its existence. Once that state has been invited by a member of the free market to influence the free market, the market is no longer free, but a vassal of the state.