I find this an encouraging post. Much is made of a potential split in the alliance of libertarian/conservatives and cultural conservatives. But to hear a cultural conservative speak so highly of von Misses and Hayek, and to refer to the case for "maintaining [the free-market] as the core of economic life" as "unanswerable", makes me think that alliance is still very strong.

Scruton writes:

"I would put the point in terms that echo Burke and Chesterton: the free market provides the optimal solution to the competition among the living for scarce resources; but when applied to the goods in which the dead and the unborn have an interest (sex, for instance) it wastes what must be saved...."

I wish Scruton would be more specific here: What, precisely, is being wasted, and how? The dead no longer exist, except in memory. They do not have any rights, let alone rights to property, except to rest unmolested. The unborn also do not exist, and may never exist, and likewise have no rights. Scruton might argue that it is a grossly impoverished society that is unmindful of the inheritance passed on to them by the dead. And equally impoverished is the society that is also unmindful of what they must pass on to the now-unborn when the time comes. And he would be right. But that's a matter for religion and conscience, not economics. But Scruton doesn't give us any specifics, never tells us what needs to be removed from the realm of economics. Until he does state some specifics, his statement is only so much pious-sounding gas, a nebulous notion that can justify all sorts of needless restrictions on the living. And it's the living whom society must serve.

And John writes:

"And this is a Procrustean bed we are always miserable in, because the state is oppressive and inefficient, but the market is corrosive, and denies our hunger for equality."

John, OF COURSE markets deny our hunger for equality, because each of us (as economic entities) IS NOT EQUAL one to another, NEVER HAS BEEN, and NEVER WILL BE. (Sorry for the upper-case letters-- it makes it look like I'm shouting at you-- but I don't know how to italicize.) I know this is not news to you or to most of the commenters here. But what irks me is the notion that government and markets are somehow opposed to each other. They aren't-- rather, they complement each other: Markets can't exist without some irreducible minimum of government acting to ensure honest, uncoerced dealings; and governments ultimately can't exist without markets to provide the resources necessary to support government (look at what happened to the Soviet Union). If we find ourselves in a "Procrustean bed [in which] we are always miserable" it's almost always because government has grown beyond that irreducible minimum needed to suppress fraud and coercion, and has started to rig the game in favor of the politically well-connected. So, generally speaking, are markets "corrosive", or do those who find markets corrosive (typically Leftists who pine for Big Government to rig the game according to their wishes) merely need an attitude adjustment (i.e., a reminder that life is unfair-- get used to it)?

I know you're no leftist, John, and neither is Roger Scruton. But one thing the leftists and SOME conservatives (like Pat Buchanan) have in common is this idea that people need to be controlled for their own good, and the more control, the better.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it looks like Scruton is peddling a raft of stasist (and statist) baloney, and it looks like you're falling for it.

Yes, I'm cranky this morning. :)

My answer to Mike turned into a new post, see above.

And Hale, I'll get back to you when I have some time to properly address your serious comment...

Thanks, John, for wading through my dense prose. :)

One more point: Upper-class Britons did (and I think still do) have a prejudice against business-- a belief that persons and ideas associated with "mere commerce" are somehow lacking in merit. Some of that prejudice no doubt rubbed off on some middle-class Britons, who sought to emulate their "betters". I know very little about Roger Scruton and his background, but I would be a little wary of citing Burke and Chesterton as authorities on the relationship between economics and morality-- their view of that relationship might be heavily influenced by a dim view of commerce.

My two cents' worth.

Hale is right, but caught in a pot/kettle moment, I think. Conservatives as much as "leftists" pine for government to "rig" the game. The conservative shibboleth of the free market is a null reference, for markets, as Hale admits, are the creatures of government. The real question is one of transparency, since a market is fundamentally a way of conveying judgments of value by means of price, and those judgments are only as good as the information they're based on.

BTW, one phrase in particular leapt out at me from Scruton's interview, which I found as offensive as Hale seems to have: "goods in which the dead have an interest."

I vote with Jefferson in regard to that concept:

"I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self-evident: 'That the earth belongs in usufruct to the living;' that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it... We seem not to have perceived that by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independent nation to another."

I put down some thoughts as a post, above.

I disagree with Jefferson, but I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing...