The way Rod has stated this, one can’t really disagree. But I think some distinctions are in order. We’ve had some debate about what it means to be conservative (and about whether there should be a debate about what it means to be conservative), and I think there needs to be a similar discussion about the free market.

I’ll repeat something I said last week. What some identify as the free market run amok looks to me more like factions using government to intervene in the free market. The story of Rod’s friend on the planning board is a case in point. This fellow’s response to the developer-lawyer was apt, and I’m sure the guy had nothing to say for himself. Government regulations on meat production, which Rod addresses later, strike me in the same way. The same for the Kelo decision last year.

I’m not an economist, but I disagree that efficiency is the foundation of the free market. Competition seems a more likely candidate. If government regulations prevent an organic meat producer from getting his product for a reasonable price to those who would want it, then in what sense is the market “efficient”? It hasn’t fulfilled its function because one producer has moved to stifle competition.

Or what about this? Nothing prevents a developer who needs a parcel of land of a certain size for this project from going into a neighborhood and trying to buy out enough property holders to get what he needs. And if enough people don’t want to sell — that is, if the market doesn’t want what he has to offer — he changes his plan or moves on to the next community. This is the free market approach, it seems to me.

But respecting others’ freedom is expensive and time-consuming, so the developer uses government (as in Kelo) to intervene in the market and get him what he wants more quickly and for less than the price set by the market. Isn’t efficiency (for the faction led by the developer) the enemy of the free market in such a case?

The free market is like any other human phenomenon in being open to manipulation and abuse. But I find it hard to conclude that our “very economic structure is designed to separate” us from traditional values (emphasis mine). To go back to the obstacles to marketing organic meat, I wonder if Crunchy Conservatism wouldn’t flourish under a market even freer than the one we have. Am I naïve? Discuss.