Markets are not value neutral or virtuous. They play by rules designed by the people that benefit from them. “Letting the market distribute wealth as it will” is simply a recipe for letting the status quo continue. The markets will produce what the markets are designed to produce – namely consolidation of wealth into the hands of those who know how to use and can access the markets.
If the market could create equity, then it would have by now.
Did you know that in every social mobility category, African Americans are no better off or worse than they were during the civil rights era? These social mobility categories include generational wealth, home ownership, business ownership, education levels, etc. Even things like health indicators are status quo or worse. The capitalist market economy is designed for those that have capital to use the market for personal economic gain. To believe that our economy is a “meritocracy” willfully ignores the fact that economic opportunity is largely based upon systems of privilege.
It is a common occurrence to excuse structural racism by intellectually outsourcing it. To believe “letting the market distribute wealth as it will” is to put one’s head in the sand regarding structural racism. It is a convenient way to avoid thinking about the role economic inequity plays in our society, particularly if you have benefited from the system as it is.
It is equivalent to other rhetorical minimalistic deflection tools such as qualified immunity for police who kill unarmed black people, referencing black-on-black crime to discuss public safety, or insisting that people just don’t want to work when analyzing minority unemployment. Racism is still racism, no matter the packaging.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. referenced economic inequality as one of the “triple evils” that America must overcome. The market is a leading force that creates this economic inequality. We have known this for generations. King referenced then Assistant Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Hyman Bookbinder, who said, “The poor can stop being poor if the rich are willing to become even richer at a slower rate.” We know this is impossible because the market will not allow it.
The market is not the answer to economic inequality. Justice is.
King elaborates: “Furthermore, Bookbinder predicted that unless a ‘substantial sacrifice is made by the American people,’ the nation can expect further deterioration of the cities, increased antagonisms between races, and continued disorders in the streets. He asserted that people are not informed enough to give adequate support to anti-poverty programs, and he leveled a share of the blame at the government because it ‘must do more to get people to understand the size of the problem.'”
We are living in Bookbinder and King’s predicted future. The markets won’t save us from it. The markets are one of the tools that created it.
In the second section of the first chapter in King’s final writing, Where Do We Go from Here: Community or Chaos, King stated, “Why is equality so assiduously avoided? Why does white America delude itself, and how does it rationalize the evil it retains?”
Tropes like “letting the market distribute wealth as it will” is the way white America does it.