The Vice President’s argument for broader government involvement in the economy rests on a tangled web of misinterpretations.
Vice President J.D. Vance maintains that conservatives should relinquish their commitment to free markets and limited government, and instead adopt what he portrays as a more “Hamiltonian” conception of the government’s role in American life and the economy. In his recent remarks, he suggests that Milton Friedman’s ideas can function only if there are “Christian guardrails” and a virtuous citizenry; lacking those prerequisites, he argues, the state must take a more proactive stance.
Andrew Langer of the Institute for Liberty critiques several of the missteps in Vance’s narrative in the Wall Street Journal. As Langer explains, Vance appears to misread how markets operate, underplay the importance of limited government, and misinterpret the Hamiltonian ideals he claims to uphold. In the op-ed, “What JD Vance Gets Wrong About Hamilton,” Langer notes
Mr. Vance’s invocation of Hamilton obscures a fundamental disagreement extending back to the founding. Hamilton was a great statesman, but his political economy wasn’t the uncontested expression of American republicanism. . .
Notes Langer, the policy choice today “isn’t between the authentically American Hamilton and the alien Friedman. It is the continuation of an old American argument over centralization, economic direction and individual liberty.”
Vance seems to think that adherence to free market principles (such as it was) is responsible for virtue’s decline. Yet as Langer notes, this is a bit backwards.
Mr. Vance’s history of America’s institutional decline may have the causation backward. Laissez-faire economics didn’t create the welfare state. It didn’t transfer responsibility for human needs from local communities to Washington. Over several generations, government programs assumed functions previously performed by families, churches, mutual-aid societies, fraternal organizations and local charities.
Government expansion didn’t single-handedly cause the decline of religious participation or civic life. But public provision frequently displaced voluntary provision. Americans increasingly looked to bureaucracies rather than to neighbors and communities for assistance.
Mr. Vance now cites the weakness of these institutions as a reason laissez-faire is no longer sufficient. But if government expansion weakened them, the answer can’t be another round of centralization. That creates a self-reinforcing cycle: Government assumes responsibilities once exercised by civil society; civil society weakens; its weakness then becomes evidence that government must assume still more responsibility.
Langer concludes:
Government has a legitimate role in protecting rights, enforcing contracts, punishing fraud and preserving the conditions of ordered liberty. It can’t manufacture faith, belonging, solidarity or moral purpose through economic planning. Those arise from relationships freely entered and responsibilities willingly undertaken.
People don’t flourish because government determines how the economy should serve them. When people are free to pursue better lives, flourishing follows. A free society benefits from strong moral institutions—but neither markets nor liberty depends on government to impose them.
It would be good if more of our political leaders understood this.
