Liberty, justice, and shopping

Back in my undergraduate days, the hard left at the university would say that liberty is just code for the privilege of wealth. I never bought it (if you'll excuse the expression). It has always struck me that liberty is every man's friend who would use it lawfully.

I saw this illustrated recently in what one might say is a trivial matter, but it is in the small things that the great principles of God's creation order are often visible. Think of the lilies of the field.

This summer I have been researching a project. As I have not been at the college much, the library has not been at hand. So I went to Amazon.com to see what the market was charging for the titles I needed. Then the fun began! For the past month I have been delighting myself buying a steady trickle of books at prices that would thrill a Scotsman's heart. For just $4, I bought George Gilder's 1980 classic, Wealth and Poverty . . . in hardcover . . . with a dust jacket . . . not a mark in it . . . delivered to my door.

Not long ago, a booklover would have had to live near a concentration of bookstores and make a special trip to hunt through their stacks of shelves, one store after another. There was a unique pleasure in that. But the results, while often surprising, were hit and miss if you had a particular title in mind. And it might take years of prowling.

But by using the internet, where large retailers like Amazon bring small re-sellers together from across the country, I can often find the item I want when I need it (likely), and at a nationally competitive price, even perhaps at a bargain. At a conference I attended in 2007, a speaker emphasized the importance of Winston Churchill's Thoughts and Adventures. At the break, I went online, found it for $8 (hardcover, dust jacket, pristine condition). Click. Bought. Within a week it was at my door. Amazing.

What has this to do with liberty? In this commonplace experience I notice three examples of the justice and goodness that ordered liberty allows, in this case through a free market.

First, the market provides broadly for people's needs. This online marketplace and these retailers developed because talented people were free to apply emerging technologies to address people's needs in pursuit of personal prosperity. Jeff Bezos gets his prosperity in abundance, and I get my books on agreeable terms. Everyone is happy.

Second, the market is not a respecter of persons. The market doesn't care if I am rich or poor; awkward or cool; black, white, or Asian. In fact, the national market allows people of humbler means to get what they want at lower prices than they would likely otherwise have to pay.

Finally, the market provides a kind of distributive justice. It puts things into the hands of people who should have them, albeit, like everything in this world, imperfectly. This is a rare form of justice. In my case, it put a book previously gathering dust in Texas for 30 years into the hands of a New York reader who could put it to immediate use.

Of course, liberty bestows greater blessings than these, including the inherent pleasure of directing one's own affairs. But liberty can be a blessing only if it is used lawfully. Those who would live free must have an eye to both the moral law of God and the civil law of man. Government establishes legal infrastructure, enforces contracts, and punishes those, like Bernie Madoff, who prey on their neighbors instead of serving their advantage, like Jeff Bezos.

Liberty as exercised in an ordered but free marketplace is part of God's good design for human well-being. It's just a part. It's not sufficient on its own. But no discussion of its shortcomings can proceed in fairness without first recognizing these great goods.