Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [117]
In adopting Friedman’s view of the free market, Reagan nevertheless imposed some of the most restrictive taxes and tariffs on non-U.S. companies. In fact, according to Noam Chomsky, Reagan imposed more restrictions on foreign competition than all administrations before him combined. This was not only a return to a form of mercantilism, which Smith’s theory argued against, but as Chomsky rightly points out, Reagan’s economic policy was an all out assault on the free-trade principle.194
Reagan also adopted the view that suppliers were more important in the “Supply and Demand” equation than consumers (who constitute the demand side). His reasoning, it seems, is connected to the assumption that there would be no consumers if there were no suppliers, in the sense that if not for the supplier the consumer (an employee of the supplier) would not have any money to buy things. In other words, the supplier is seen as the one who gives to the employee the very money that the employee (when acting as consumer) will return to the supplier once the product being sold is bought (a product which the consumer in fact made when acting as employee). Valuing the supplier over the consumer (demander) in this way gave rise to an economic model known as supply-side economics. According to this model, since suppliers play the most important role in the economy, the government must do everything within its power to foster and to protect them—especially from those pesky consumers. The idea is not only to provide substantial tax relief to suppliers (corporations), but to provide subsidies that assist them in generating capital, and to secure legislation that restricts consumers from suing suppliers.
As we all know, this form of “capitalism” sports another name, “trickle-down economics,” which holds that as suppliers accumulate more wealth (in part because the system gives advantages to them) that wealth will trickle down to consumers, who occupy the lowest rung of the economic ladder. This is brought about, in part, by way of those suppliers in their providing more jobs (and presumably higher wages), but also by way of suppliers in their offering products at the lowest possible prices (and so, presumably, this allows the consumer more purchasing power).
The reader may suspect that if the above is Stephen’s view, which values suppliers over demanders, the view looks to stray from the free market as defined above (or, certainly from the way in which Smith envisioned it). Another potential problem arises, I think, in Stephen’s not only giving preference to suppliers over demanders, but in giving them preference over the free market itself. To Maria Bartiromo, for example, he says, “I believe in the free market except when it might hurt a corporation.” Given his identification of the free market to God Almighty, valuing suppliers over the market is like valuing those souls constituting the hierarchy of the Beatific Vision over that at which they are directed (God). So, Stephen’s view is really a religion that worships corporations, not the free market per se. If Stephen’s view is representative of that held by the Bush administration, this would explain, I think, the strategy of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to save certain corporations from the destructive forces of the market—to save them from capitalism—that have given birth to the current financial crisis.
Okay, so this is the nutshell version of Stephen’s view of free-market capitalism. I now turn to taking a quick look at how it has (mis)informed his view of the nature of knowledge, and more importantly, the nature of higher education.
The Academy: Left or Leftest?
“You can’t put a price on knowledge,” Stephen says,