Some fun email.

Hi, Jonah,
I think liberty, justice, inalienable rights, and respected institutions to administer those are key ingredients for making markets function in a way we all would like, but I don’t think they’re the same thing as markets. Couldn’t you have those things without markets (France!) or have markets without those things (China!)?
What are your thoughts?

And:

Jonah,
I think PJ meant that the price mechanism is a “measurement,” which it is. It’s a measurement of the value of a good or services in monetary form unimpeded by government regulation, be it support or control, when found in the free market.
And:

The free market is “reality.”

You’d think the reality based community would realize that. In societies where they tried to impose their will on the free market, or push it aside, the free market became known as the “Black Market.” The market is like water…it’ll seep in, despite your best efforts.

And:

PJ should have said “markets” are scales, not “free markets,” as his point is applicable to unfree markets too. This is a really underappreciated point, as markets aren’t something you choose to have. It drives me crazy when conservatives are criticized for devotion to markets. That’s like crticizing somebody building a bridge for being devoted to math and physics. Zimbabwe and North Korea have markets, but the markets are are affected by poorly thought out rules that result in items being hard to price and or impossible to get legally, resulting in black markets.
Your point applies to the “free” part of “free markets.” Free markets are essential to liberty.

And:

Jonah,
Economic systems _are_ just a way to set prices, that’s why we have
them. Socialists & Communists believe that a central authority is more
able to set prices, free market folk think that price setting should be
a dynamic thing according to supply/demand laws, etc… There may be a
political/philosophical reason for why any given nation CHOOSES their
economic system, but in the end, the only goal is to communicate price
within itself.

Me: Here’s the problem: I consider socialism to be a kind of tyranny because it presumes to take legitimate freedoms away from individuals. And if socialism is a kind of tyranny, the lack of it is more than just a measurement. The philosopher Robert Nozick said it well when he wrote that that “The socialist society would have to forbid capitalist acts between consenting adults.”

Again, I understand entirely what P.J. is getting at when he describes markets as measurements. Markets are the best means for setting prices. What I object to is the word “just.”

I am all for more people understanding and appreciating the raw empirical power and objective superiority of market mechanisms. But there are philosophical and moral arguments at work here as well. And, while I think P.J. is on very, very, strong ground when he says “we blew it,” I don’t think our failure was solely rooted in our inability to defend efficient pricing mechanisms. Democratic capitalism, as everyone from Adam Smith to Michael Novak have argued far better than I could, is not purely a sterile and amoral arrangement for efficiently allocating resources. I don’t see why conservatives can’t defend the free market on both moral and empirical terms. Indeed, I thought we tend to believe that the right and the good have more than a coincidental tendency to go together.