With former British Prime Minister Liz Truss’ free-market reforms having severely wounded the British economy, a chorus of pundits have claimed that the end of free-market thought is upon us. Who could at this point be so foolhardy as to claim that simply cutting taxes for the rich — and not doing much else — would make us all rich?
Well, don’t think for a minute that this British debacle will put an end to free-market thought. This latest form of supply-side trickle-down economics is, after all, rooted in a belief system that goes back thousands of years. Even though it has failed over and over again, people and governments keep coming back to the dream that markets can simply run themselves.
Adam Smith, considered by many as the founder of free-market thought, is a good guide for understanding just how powerful this philosophy is. Smith was an heir to the moral philosophy of the Roman senator Cicero. Like Cicero, Smith thought that if like-minded upper-class men tended their farms and traded in friendship and not simply for profit, they could count on nature to create a perpetual system of wealth. It seemed a plausible idea. The Roman Republic was more than 500 years old, and its senatorial oligarchy had enjoyed constant riches and status since time immemorial.
