Why Do Some Defend Civil Liberties But Not Free Markets?

{Editor’s Note: This is the 25th installment of a series of articles attempting to address the 32 questions posed by Ron Paul in his recent farewell speech given in front of Congress. Check out the previous installment,  “Why Do Some Defend Free Markets, But Not Civil Liberties}As the lone liberal convert in the Lions of Liberty group, I felt adequately positioned to try to explain the reason that so called “progressive” members of Congress often defend civil liberties while they neglect their equally important duty to defend free markets.  As Ron Paul has pointed out many, many times, free markets cannot logically be separated from civil liberties.  Economic freedom is but a member of the larger pool of liberties to which we are all entitled.  Our statist legislators on the left, for the most part, do not understand this.  Many believe that they are actually protecting civil liberties with their onerous shackles to our fiscal freedom, as freedom has become a very subjective term.Freedom is not always the bowl of cherries we fantasize it to be.  Sometimes freedom means higher prices, lower wages, or other undesirable short term effects that people feel entitled to avoid.  I always use the example of a conversation I once had with a co-worker to illustrate this point.  We were discussing the absurd infringement of liberty our State purveys by allowing the police to run license plates at random.  After a passionate agreement over the unconscionable disregard for civil liberties such overreaching power displays, he turned the conversation to oil profits. He then said of gas prices, “The government should do something about it.  It’s criminal what they are charging us. They are making all that money, it’s unfair, criminal….”  His belief that governments should not be able to run checks on your record without proper suspicion, but that they should be able to interfere with what you are willing to pay at the pump was an obvious contradiction.  To him and a more progressive me of the past, however, there was no philosophical conflict.Why Do Some Defend Civil Liberties But Not Free Markets?My coworker and many others, including myself in a former life, regretfully misuse the term "liberty". They believe we should have the freedom to be paid arbitrarily high salaries, pay artificially lower prices, or be insured against uninsurable risk.  We mistake entitlement for liberty. It’s hard to defend economic liberty as a wage earner because market movement appears mostly unfair from that perspective.  But what is less just than an arbitrary leash on the will of the market?  The exercise becomes easier if you place yourself on the producer side of things.  If you produced or possessed something that someone else would pay $1000 for, is it morally justifiable for the government to tell you that you are only allowed to charge $200? If an appraisal values your home at $300K, would you willingly accept $150K due to an FHA price ceiling?  Does the buyer of your property deserve “freedom from” the truly fair price?The coworker in this example lived over 60 miles away from his place of work, a decision he himself made.  No one forced him to move to a place that requires 3 tanks of gas a week to reach.  This was, rightfully, his choice.  As a result of such choices replicated exponentially throughout the nation the demand for gas rose, ceteris paribus of course.  These are consequences to the free choices of individuals.  Placing a cap on the price of gas is tantamount to capping how far a person may choose to live from his work place.  Almost all would agree that a government dictating where a person may live is a terrible affront to personal freedom, but few seem to draw the parallel criticism to a government dictating the price a supplier is allowed to sell for the goods it labored to produce.Another rationale for ignoring economic freedom comes under the handily vague term “regulation.” Regulation is the umbrella term used by everyone to justify gross violations of a private entity’s financial liberty.  The slogan goes something like this, “Without more regulation, we will all be less free.”  But the reality of regulation is far less heroic. The cautionary tales of “systematic risk” that our economic wardens use to remind us of regulatory necessity is only possible if a business or industry’s risks are socialized. This can only happen through government interference in markets.  From Fannie and Freddie to the FDIC, government regulation and safeguarding centralizes risk and creates the very economic chaos it uses to justify its existence.Regulations can be as simple as taxation.  Taxes themselves are  an insult to economic freedom.  They are ironically defended by apologists as “the cost of freedom” or essential for “fairness.”  These ridiculous claims also avoid the idea of liberty and confuse it with something it’s not.  We need to understand that a tax is the forceful seizure of property, regardless if you agree or disagree with the line item that it pays for.We all need to re-evaluate what liberty actually means. It is not a concept of convenience that can be applied when useful for your own desires or constituents.  A business is profitable because there is a market for its wares. That market is the true voice of you and me, the loudest one we have. Government efforts to control that voice need to be held to the same scrutiny as their efforts to limit your other personal choices.  While a mandated lower gas price may be good for your wallet right now, it will bankrupt our freedom forever.  For anyone to truly champion personal liberty, they must recognize that economic freedom is an essential part of it.                              Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!