"the free market mindset: history, psychology, and consequences"

I always get a kick out of hearing the elite talk about how all us unwashed masses are ignorant and deluded. Like when His Holiness B. Hussein 0bama said that we red state hicks are clinging bitterly to our guns and religion.

Now, Harvard Law School is hosting a conference entitled "the free market mindset:
history, psychology, and consequences" in which the participants intend to demonstrate how stupid and mentally disturbed are those of us who believe in freedom. (Hat tip to Protein Wisdom). Many of the presenters come from elite universities, including Harvard, Chicago, Yale, and Stanford. And although most of the presenters come from law schools or sociology departments, there is also Stephen Marglin, from Harvard's economics department, and Sheena Iyengar, from Columbia Business School.

Here are a few choice excerpts from the schedule of presentations:

Stephen Marglin, “ How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community”: Economics is a two-faced, one might almost say schizophrenic, discipline. It claims to be a science, describing the world, telling it like it is without preconception or value judgment. (Never mind that the hey-day of positivism that enshrines the separation between fact and value is long past; economists have always lived in a time warp.) The reality is that descriptive economics has been shaped by a framework of assumptions, a metaphysics more geared to its normative message than to its descriptive pretensions. This framework is essential to the normative side of an economics that trumpets the virtues of markets and is maintained even when it gets in the way of understanding how the economy really works. The 19th century physicist, Lord Kelvin, famously proclaimed the virtue of knowledge imbued with the precision of number. Economics goes physics one better, from epistemology to ontology: anything we can’t measure—like community—simply doesn’t exist. If your model of the world is inhabited by self-interested individuals rationally calculating how to consume ever more, for whom society is the nation-state, community is not going to show up on your radar. It goes without saying that economic hardship, especially the kind caused by unemployment and short hours, will make community more necessary and more visible; people will have to rely on each other more and more as the market fails them. It remains to be seen what impact this dose of reality will have on economics.

That's right Stephen. All us awful economists, including you and your colleagues at Harvard, are schizophrenic deniers of the existence of community.

Juliet Schor, “ Colossal Failure: The Output Bias of Market Economies”: Mainstream economic theory claims that a competitive market equilibrium delivers optimal levels of consumption and well-being. The reasoning relies on a number of invalid assumptions, including the crucial premise that individuals’ preference structures are independent. If consumption is social, as considerable social science research shows, then the market delivers excessive levels of consumption, too many hours of work, and too much ecological degradation. (This is in addition to the well-known argument that ecological goods are externalities.) In this talk I discuss the implications of what has become a profound market failure, and how we can rectify it.

I can't wait to see Juliet's prescription for rectifying this horrendous problem. It wouldn't have anything to do with more government planning, higher taxes, and centralized control? Naw.

Sheena Iyengar, “ The Multiple Choice Problem”: It is a common supposition in modern society that the more choices, the better—that the human ability to manage, and the human desire for, choice is infinite. From classic economic theories of free enterprise, to mundane marketing practices that provide customers with entire aisles devoted to potato chips or soft drinks, to highly consequential life decisions in which people contemplate multiple options for medical treatment or investment opportunities for retirement, this belief pervades our institutions, norms, and customs. In this era of abundant choice, there are several dilemmas that people face: How do you choose given the sheer number of domains in which you now have the ability to choose? And in any given domain, what are the ramifications of being confronted with more options than ever before?

Isn't it terrible for us to have all these choices? I know, let's get the government to restrict our choices.

Jaime Napier, “ The Palliative Function of Ideology”: In this research, we drew on system-justification theory and the notion that conservative ideology serves a palliative function to explain why conservatives are happier than liberals. Specifically, in three studies using nationally representative data from the United States and nine additional countries, we found that right-wing (vs. left-wing) orientation is indeed associated with greater subjective well-being and that the relation between political orientation and subjective well-being is mediated by the rationalization of inequality. In our third study, we found that increasing economic inequality (as measured by the Gini index) from 1974 to 2004 has exacerbated the happiness gap between liberals and conservatives, apparently because conservatives (more than liberals) possess an ideological buffer against the negative hedonic effects of economic inequality.

This has got to be my favorite. Conservatives are happier than liberals because we "rationalize inequality". If this is so, then why do conservatives donate far more money to charity than so-called 'liberals'? Perhaps it is because conservatives actually care about those who are less fortunate than us. Whereas leftists, especially super-wealthy leftists, are more interested in having the government stick a gun in other people's faces and forcing them to donate to the less fortunate, rather than donating their own wealth.

I consider myself fortunate to not possess the brilliance of these intellectual 'elite'. Perhaps it is because I went to blue-collar universities like the University of Texas and Ohio State.