How The Mixed Economy Breeds Criminality, Tribalism, and Social Rancor

The mixed economy is a type of social system that combines some aspects of a free market with government controls, regulations, and subsidies. This type of social system is extolled by many politicians and media pundits, who believe that it creates the optimum combination between capitalism and socialism. The reality is that the mixed economy is an increasingly inhospitable environment for productive and innovative individuals, who are continuously penalized and handicapped for their efforts. This social system incentivizes machiavellian double-crossing and manipulation, so as to leverage government force in one’s own favor and against one’s competitors.

A clever scapegoat for the faults of a mixed economy is money in politics. We are told that if only there wasn’t so much money tempting politicians to act selfishly, they would be able to instead focus on the ‘common good’. The power that politicians wield in a mixed economy, initiatory force, cannot be used to improve human life. By its very nature, force is that which neutralizes reason. Since human flourishing is based on production, and since production is a function of reason, force ultimately works to undermine human flourishing. The question of whether rich donors gain control of such force is irrelevant. Instead of working to wipe this illegitimate power from human existence, we are told to infringe upon freedom of expression and blame successful producers who work to make our lives better. Since there is no such thing as the ‘common good’, there is no way to achieve it in practice. All that can be achieved is tribalism and social discord.

The mixed economy incentivizes social rancor by leaving such aforementioned illegitimate power available for the most ambitious taker, to be wielded against any victims of one’s choosing. Society quickly degenerates into a bloodsport, in which all individuals are thrown into irreconcilable conflict. Even those who want nothing to do with such a bloodsport are forced to negotiate for government force in simple self-defense.

The individual is a sitting duck in a mixed economy, and for this reason, the mixed economy incentivizes tribalism and pressure group warfare. Pressure groups offer limited protection to those within them, promising to leverage government force at the expense of other groups. People even invent new groups to give their corruption more perceived legitimacy, such as the American Corn Growers Association, Children’s Healthcare is a Legal Duty, and the Nutritional Health Alliance. Who would ever want to hurt corn farmers, take away children's health care, or stop nutritional health?

Beneath whatever sympathetic guises pressure groups invent, they want but one thing: stolen goods at the expense of taxpayers. It matters not how noble or compassionate their goals sound; if any group wants goods at the forced expense of others, you can be certain that compassion is not their motivation.

The mixed economy is a social system based on corruption, tribalism, and irrational force. Its rules are arbitrary, its goals equally so. Its results: catastrophic. When a social system is based on a set of arbitrary, non-objective, and unjust rules, some people stop caring about the rules altogether.

The criminal believes that society is out to enslave and oppress him. He sees himself as a rebel who says “no” to the arbitrary demands of his society, living a life of fierce defiance against everyone else, who the criminal views as the enemy.

What kind of social system reinforces such a mindset? A free society bans all persecution of all individuals, allowing for the conditions of total harmony to emerge. A mixed economy allows persecution and oppression, so long as it is done politely and with the sanction of a sizeable group. This type of social system fuels the criminal mindset because it offers legitimate grounds for the criminal to feel the way he does. If the criminal really has been forced into inexorable conflict with those around him, why ought he not steal, injure, and kill?

Obviously, this is not to endorse the criminal’s actions, but rather to explain the political aggravating factors of his angst. In a mixed economy, not only are individual rights insufficiently protected, but they are systematically violated in the name of achieving the ‘common good’ at best, and ‘social justice’ at worst. While undeniably wrong, the criminal’s actions are not only open to explanation, but dare I say understandable.

The greatest evil of the mixed economy, however, is its instability. In any society, mixture represents the transition from one fundamental principle to its opposite. One example includes the “mixture” of aristotelean philosophy into the culture of medieval Europe from St. Thomas Aquinas. Another is the gradual increase of state control over the economies of the western world. To the extent to which physical force is introduced into human relationships, the legitimate virtues of human existence are negated.

Since the dominant moral code of western society is altruism, people have a tendency of blaming current economic stagnation, impoverishment, and instability on the last remnants of the free enterprise system. This lens from which most people view the world makes the continued acceleration towards statism almost inevitable.

The mixed economy is not a fair and balanced political system; it is that type of social system which mixes fairness and unfairness, freedom and controls, force and reason. The fundamental problem with the mixed economy is not that it is based on the wrong set of principles, but that it is based on no principles at all. Any realm of human action in which no principles are applied, the worst possible result will occur. Politics is no different.