Controls and Powerlessness
by Joseph Rowlands

To understand some of the hostility towards free markets and appeal of government power, it's useful to think about things in terms of having control over your life. People want to have some amount of control over the things that dominate their lives. They don't want to be helpless as other people control their lives.

From this perspective of control, the free market is a scary place. Private ownership means private judgment. An owner of a company can do anything he wants, and has no obligation to be responsible to those people who rely on him. If he wants to raise prices far beyond what people can pay, they will no longer have access to the goods or services they need. While economists may claim that the private owners are incentivized to provide better products at lower prices, private property means that they don't need to. Their whims, no matter how evil or irrational, are all that matters.

From this same perspective, government control is viewed favorably. That's because government is indirectly controlled by the people. That means they can't simply do whatever they want. You have some power or influence over their decisions. Even if your influence is small, you aren't powerless.

I've seen this approach in action. When energy prices increased in California, there were calls for the entire industry to be nationalized, or 'federalized' which avoided the contentious language. The idea wasn't that government would do a better job of running the companies or anything. It was simply that as long as these companies are in private hands, we have no control over them. And since electricity is so fundamentally important to our lives, it seemed insane to leave absolute control over it in that hands of private owners.

The same thinking applies in every industry. The more important it is, the more they think it should be controlled by the government. Perhaps that control is through outright nationalization. Perhaps it's through "regulation" where the government still makes the decisions but profit is still kept private. There are lots of ways of enabling the control that they desire.

So the important point is that the desire for government involvement is a desire for control, and a fear that without it there are individuals out there who have control over our lives with no accountability or appeal. It isn't based on the belief that government can do the job better, or even that profit is evil. They same people might also accept those arguments, but this one is different. It is a matter of enabling people to have control over the big factors in their lives.

The political method of control is very superficial. Yes, you have the right to vote, but usually only for candidates. It's unlikely that any candidate will fully satisfy you in terms of their policy choices, which means even if you win, you lose. But if you lose, you lose entirely. If your candidate doesn't get elected, you have nobody in government representing you. Political control means winners and losers.

If your candidate does happen to win, he is under no obligation to vote for the policies he promised. And even if he does pursue those policies, he is only one vote among many so you have the opportunity to lose all over again. And there are plenty of unelected bureaucrats who end up exerting control in countless ways, in which you have no real control over.

And if that weren't all bad enough, government is by its nature a one-size-fits-all method of decision making. If you pass a law, it applies to everyone. If you create a minimum wage, it applies to everyone. If you pass price caps on products, it applies to everyone. If you pass a law saying what a health insurance program must cover, it applies to everyone. It is considered a serious problem when government passes laws that do not apply equally to everyone.

So the amount of control you actually have is limited at best. Political control is mostly the illusion of control.

In contrast to this view of control, the free market offers a different view with its own strengths. In the marketplace, it doesn't have to be one-size-fits-all. If some people want to buy SUVs, they can. If others want to buy sporty roadsters, they can. If some want to ride bicycles to work, they can. The market enables true diversity, and allows people to get the products that they want. You never have 49% of a market disenfranchised because the 51% preferred a different option. If people can make money providing you with a service or product, they happily will.

The idea of a "niche market" is something you could never seek in politics. If you aren't on the winning side in politics, you are on the losing side. But markets are happy to provide a plethora of varieties.

In practice people have far more control in the market setting than they do in the political setting. And even if existing producers are not interested in building a product that you desire, you are always free to build it yourself or hire people to do it for you. In the political realm, there is no possibility for you to take this kind of control. You are stuck with the majority.

While the free market may allow significantly more control in practice, it's important to note that this will not be entirely convincing to those who accept the first view. While in practice you may have more control, in theory there is the possibility of a lack of control. Government, on the other hand, may lack practical day-to-day control, but in theory you have the ability to control things if needed. In terms of the worst case, private ownership sounds scarier because there is no recourse at the end of the day.

Of course, even this isn't true. It assumes that the market is fixed and that competition is impossible. If you are afraid of a company, or all of them, acting poorly, you can band together with others and start a new company or find someone else who is willing. And economists have noted that the worse a company acts, the more incentive there is for others to enter the marketplace. So even the worst case is not really a problem.

It all boils down to wanting control over our lives, and recognizing how to achieve it. Politics seems to provide an easy answer, but in practice you have little control and will often lose. The free market, in contrasts, has less obvious control, but in practice it is a far more powerful method of control.

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