SALON
Sunday, Sep 14, 2014 01:00 PM EDT
Atheist libertarians pose as skeptics --
except when it comes to free markets and the nature of corporate power
CJ Werleman
Why
atheists are disproportionately drawn to libertarianism is a question
that many liberal atheists have trouble grasping. To believe that
markets operate and exist in a state of nature is, in itself, to believe
in the supernatural. The very thing atheists have spent their lives
fleeing from.
According to the American Values Survey, a mere 7
percent of Americans identify as “consistently libertarian.” Compared to
the general population, libertarians are significantly more likely to
be white (94 percent), young (62 percent under 50) and male (68
percent). You know, almost identical to the demographic makeup of
atheists – white (95 percent), young (65 percent under 50) and male (67
percent). So there’s your first clue.
Your second clue is that
atheist libertarians are skeptical of government authority in the same
way they’re skeptical of religion. In their mind, the state and the pope
are interchangeable, which partly explains the libertarian atheist’s
guttural gag reflex to what they perceive as government interference
with the natural order of things, especially “free markets.”
Robert
Reich says that one of the most deceptive ideas embraced by the Ayn
Rand-inspired libertarian movement is that the free market is natural,
and exists outside and beyond government. In other words, the “free
market” is a constructed supernatural myth.
There is much to cover
here, but a jumping-off point is the fact that corporations are a
government construct, and that fact alone refutes any case for economic
libertarianism. Corporations, which are designed to protect shareholders
insofar as mitigating risk beyond the amount of their investment, are
created and maintained only via government action. “Statutes, passed by
the government, allow for the creation of corporations, and anyone
wishing to form one must fill out the necessary government paperwork and
utilize the apparatus of the state in numerous ways. Thus, the
corporate entity is by definition a government-created obstruction to
the free marketplace, so the entire concept should be appalling to
libertarians,” says David Niose, an atheist and legal director of the
American Humanist Association.
In the 18th century, Adam Smith,
the granddaddy of American free-market capitalism, wrote his economic
tome “The Wealth of Nations.” But his book has as much relevance to
modern mega-corporation hyper-capitalism today as the Old Testament has
to morality in the 21st century.
Reich
says rules that define the playing field of today’s capitalism don’t
exist in nature; they are human creations. Governments don’t “intrude”
on free markets; governments organize and maintain them. Markets aren’t
“free” of rules; the rules define them. “In reality, the ‘free market’
is a bunch of rules about 1) what can be owned and traded (the genome?
slaves? nuclear materials? babies? votes?); 2) on what terms (equal
access to the Internet? the right to organize unions? corporate
monopolies? the length of patent protections?); 3) under what conditions
(poisonous drugs? unsafe foods? deceptive Ponzi schemes? uninsured
derivatives? dangerous workplaces?); 4) what’s private and what’s public
(police? roads? clean air and clean water? healthcare? good schools?
parks and playgrounds?); 5) how to pay for what (taxes, user fees,
individual pricing?). And so on.”
Atheists are skeptics, but
atheist libertarians evidently check their skepticism at the door when
it comes to corporate power and the self-regulatory willingness of
corporations to act in the interests of the common good. In the mind of
an atheist libertarian, both religion and government is bad, but
corporations are saintly. On what planet, where? Corporations exist for
one purpose only: to derive maximum profit for their shareholders. “The
corporation’s legally defined mandate is to pursue, relentlessly and
without exception, its own self-interest, regardless of the often
harmful consequences it might cause others,” writes Joel Bakan, author
of “The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power.”
Corporations
pollute, lie, steal, oppress, manipulate and deceive, all in the name
of maximizing profit. Corporations have no interest for the common good.
You really believe Big Tobacco wouldn’t sell cigarettes to 10-year-olds
if government didn’t prohibit it? Do you really think Big Oil wouldn’t
discharge more poisons and environmentally harmful waste into the
atmosphere if government regulations didn’t restrict it? Do you really
believe Wal-Mart wouldn’t pay its workers less than the current minimum
wage if the federal government didn’t prohibit it? If you answered yes
to any of the above, you may be an atheist libertarian in desperate need
of Jesus.
That awkward pause that inevitably follows asking a
libertarian how it is that unrestricted corporate power, particularly
for Big Oil, helps solve our existential crisis, climate change, is
always enjoyable. “Corporations will harm you, or even kill you, if it
is profitable to do so and they can get away with it … recall the
infamous case of the Ford Pinto, where in the 1970s the automaker did a
cost-benefit analysis and decided not to remedy a defective gas tank
design because doing so would be more expensive than simply allowing the
inevitable deaths and injuries to occur and then paying the anticipated
settlements,” warns Niose.
In the 1970s, consumer protection
advocate Ralph Nader became famous for helping protect car owners from
the unsafe practices of the auto industry. Corporate America, in turn,
went out of its way in a coordinated effort, led by U.S. Supreme Court
Justice Lewis Powell, to destroy Nader. The documentary “Unreasonable
Man” demonstrates how corporate CEOs of America’s biggest corporations
had Nader followed in an attempt to discredit and blackmail him. General
Motors went so far as to send an attractive lady to his local
supermarket in an effort to meet him, and seduce him. That’s how much
corporate America was fearful of having to implement pesky and costly
measures designed to protect the well-being of their customers.
Today
America is facing its greatest moral crisis since the civil rights
movement, and its greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression:
income inequality. Now, income inequality doesn’t happen by accident. It
happens by the political choices a country makes. Today America is the
most income unequal among all developed nations, and we find ourselves
here today not because of government regulation or interference, but a
lack thereof. The past three decades have seen our political class
become totally beholden to the armies of corporate lobbyists who fund
the political campaigns of our elected officials. Today the bottom 99
percent of income earners has no influence on domestic policy
whatsoever.
The unilateral control that Wall Street and
mega-corporations have over economic policy is now extreme, and our
corporate overlords have seen to the greatest transfer of wealth from
the middle class to the rich in U.S. history, while corporations
contribute their lowest share of total federal tax revenue ever. The
destruction of labor; serf-level minimum wage; and the deregulation,
monopolization and privatization of public assets have pushed us deeper
into becoming a winner-takes-all society.
In effect, America
virtually exists as a libertarian state, certainly when compared to
liberal democracies found in Western Europe, Canada and Australia. In
these countries, there’s a sense of “we are all in this together,” but
here the romantic idealism of the rugged individual allows corporate
influence of the political class to gut public safety nets, eradicate
collective bargaining, strip regulatory control of our banks, water,
skies and our food.
By every measure, Australians, Scandinavians,
Canadians, Germans and the Dutch are happier and more economically
secure. The U.N. World Development Fund, the U.N. World Happiness Index
and the Social Progress Index contain the empirical evidence atheist
libertarians should seek, and the results are conclusive: People are
happier, healthier and more socially mobile where the size of the state
is bigger, and taxes and regulations on corporations are greater. You
know, the opposite of the libertarian dream that would turn America into
a deeper nightmare.
CJ Werleman is the author of "Crucifying America"
and "God Hates You. Hate Him Back." You can follow him on Twitter:
@cjwerleman
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