Human nature tends toward favoritism and chauvinism. People are naturally partial toward those who are somehow similar to them: in terms of age, race, gender, income level, etc.
In short, human nature is not fair.
Our sense of justice — our idea that people should receive equal opportunities, have the right to express political opinions, and be able to bargain freely in economic situations — are in direct contradiction to human nature.
Justice is a learned behavior, as historian Jonah Goldberg writes:
The idea that we should presume strangers are not only inherently trustworthy but also have innate dignity and rights does not come naturally to us. We have to be taught that — carefully taught. The free market is even more unnatural, because it doesn’t just encourage us to see strangers to be tolerated; it encourages us to see strangers as Customers.
Human nature, left unchecked, can and often does, veer into bigotry and racism.
But the free enterprise system nudges people away from bigotry and racism. The manager of a shoe store wants to sell shoes, and doesn’t care about the race, gender, income level, or age of the customers. The manager will also want to engender goodwill, and thereby repeat customers, for the shoe store, and will therefore will want to make sure that the customers are treated politely and have an enjoyable shopping experience.
The free market is antithetical to racism.
The invention of money was one of the greatest advances in human liberation in all of recorded history because it lowers the barriers to beneficial human interaction. It reduces the natural tendency to acquire things from strangers through violence by offering the opportunity for commerce. A grocer may be bigoted toward Catholics, Jews, blacks, whites, gays, or some other group. But his self-interest encourages him to overlook such things. Likewise, the customer may not like the grocer, but the customer’s self-interest encourages her to put such feelings aside if she wants to buy dinner. In a free market, money corrodes caste and class and lubricates social interaction.
The salutary forces of natural rights and limited government are confusingly called “liberalism” — more accurately, “classical liberalism,” which differs from left liberalism, social liberalism, neoliberalism, and modern liberalism.
Confusing terminology aside, limited government gives rise to free markets, and natural rights give rise to equal opportunity.
A strong and powerful government becomes the instrument of the sinister aspects of human nature: tribalism, sectarianism, ethnocentrism. A centralized and controlling government will divide people into categories, and assign priorities to those categories.
Natural rights speak to a person’s humanity — regardless of demographic variables — inasmuch as all humans desire to be free, regardless of gender, income level, race, or age. The desire for liberty is one of the few truly universal human values.
