Are Free Market Choices all that Important?

Is choice important? To hear many people speak, it is of the utmost importance. Look at all the options which the market gives us; compare that to the options Soviet citizens had back in the day. We can go into stores and buy all kinds of clothes, food, and recreational toys. Isn't that just great?

Well, yes, it is. And no, it's not.

To be sure, some choices matter a whole lot more than others. If you're thinking of using your free will option of grand theft, we encourage you vehemently not to give in to it. But in day to day things, the sorts of things which we are not saying are wrong in themselves, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the places we frequent, how important is choice, really?

We like what we like and so long as what we like is moral, we wonder whether it's worth the quibble. Yet we see so many people trying so many new things so much of the time that we can't help but ask, what are they looking for? What meaning is there to eating wings a third, fourth, or fiftieth style? To wearing the latest fashion? To sipping the newest brew or watching the current smash hit movie or TV show? Why all this apparent fascination with doing new, and this really seems to translate only into different, things?

What are people looking for that they can't be satisfied with what they have or is already readily available? Why do we live in a society which tolerates, nay, encourages, such consumerism? As a rule, the latest fad or fashion simply cannot be all that spectacular, really. What are people seeking?

We think they seek meaning. Long term, eternal meaning in what they might say or do or in how they act. In an increasingly relativistic world, a world where choice is in truth impotent, many folks still want, still need, things of value, things which really stand for something. So 'things' and 'events' and 'experiences' naturally become substitutes for real meaning. When the big choices don't matter, the little ones will fill the gap however feebly they are able. Being feeble attempts at meaning, they must proliferate, because they are gone as fast as they emerge.

The question is does the latest thing actually make us into anything of value. We don't believe it, of necessity, does. We think most relativists know that too. And it eats them alive. As a result, in these modern times, where a soul should be are only buffalo wings.

Libertarians are Moral Relativists

Are libertarians moral relativists? It's a fascinating question on several levels, not the least of which involves areas where they are and are not willing to pass judgement. Government run economies? Bad. Free markets? Good. But what of all the other issues which vex humanity, which gnaw at the conscience both of the person and the body politic, and are, if we are to be true to any decent sense of right and wrong, more important than economics?

Abortion? A woman may or may not have one - her choice. Gay marriage or same sex partnerships? Any couple where each person enters into the contract freely is all right with them. Freedom of speech? You can anything you want without bother about whether it should be said. In short, whatever does not harm another person (and this generally seems to apply only towards physical harm) is to be tolerated by everyone else.

But of course, there are things which do harm that are not physically hurtful. Even our libertarian friends recognize the need for laws against theft or slander. So why are they so unwilling to consider whether other things not, perhaps, obviously harmful to an individual are in fact harmful to them or society, so much so that society has the right to ban them? This we ask before we are even near the question of whether abortion physically harms another individual. Why are libertarians so unwilling to even consider whether human women have human babies, with all that that question demands of us?

It appears that, in areas which don't tickle their fancy, libertarians don't particularly care about moral right and wrong. If a guard at GITMO looks at a detainee cross eyed you would think it the worst civil rights abuse ever (this without a consideration of why the detainee was there in the first place) and libertarians, quite properly, condemn drone strikes. Why not address any and all moral questions, questions of man's inhumanity to man, even of man's inhumanity to himself, if you will, with the same intensity if they are really interested in doing the right thing all the time?

Then we have their view of religion. Libertarians say they are for religious freedom. Yet as a group it is not something they stress. They were on the whole conspicuously silent over the HHS mandate debacle. They say they are for the Five Freedoms; they sure seem to fret over the four, with a decidedly shallower emphasis than on the fifth. This can only mean one thing: on the whole, they don't care very much about God.

And that is their weakness. Buckley's right, you know. The battle between the individual and the collective is the battle between God and atheism on another level. Without individuals ordained with individuality, along with the acceptance that that individuality is ordained upon them rather than being created for and by themselves as a mere human construct, then there's no point in working for individual rights. Without a consideration of the origin of the individual along with what he is or ought to be, it is ultimately pointless to discuss individual rights. Without knowing, the best we can, what we should be, we are no better than the collective.

We've said before that liberals want what the want solely because they want it. We fear that libertarians are the same way, and to an ill purpose. It allows them to ignore moral questions they prefer not to address.

So again we ask, are libertarians moral relativists?

Yes.