Market Fundamentalisms
George Soros
It’s that markets will correct themselves, that you should leave it to the markets, and there is no need for government intervention in financial affairs. Letting markets run rampant.
Which is more accurate a metaphor than he knows. Because while these principles do drive the politics behind our recent market downturns, like Christian fundamentalism the principles get sacrificed to political and financial opportunity whenever possible. The current bailout is not the only time we’ve “socialized risk,” and government contracting has been at its non-competitive best under the Bush administration (although certainly not all that hot in prior ones, either).
Moyers asks if we’re all going to become socialists, and Soros explains that socialism is a “false ideology.” He also says that market fundamentalism is a “false ideology.” When Moyers asks him what a true ideology is, Soros suggests we abandon the search for economic ideology altogether:
[...A]ll our ideas, all our human constructs have a flaw in it. And perfection is not attainable. And we must engage in critical thinking and correct our mistakes.
That’s my ideology. As a child, I experienced Fascism, the Nazi occupation and then Communism, two false ideologies. And I learned that both of those ideologies are false. And now I was shocked when I found that even in a democracy people can be misled to the extent that we’ve been misled in the last few years.
You’re simply not going to be able to come up with first principles, a Ten Commandments for economic policy. What works in one context might not work in another. If we enact some socialist policies that does not make us socialist any more than using a pipe-wrench makes us a plumber.
