It is difficult to imagine how a society most of whose members do not believe in individual freedom could become or remain a free society. There must be a tipping point, perhaps away from the majority, where the mob will take over or impose its values on the rest of the individuals. This is why classical liberals such as James Buchanan Where Frederic Hayek giving great importance to the private morality that prevails in a society, the first by invoking an ethic of reciprocity between natural equals, the second by emphasizing traditional moral rules in a self-regulating order.
Anarcho-capitalists and some more traditional libertarians such as Gordon Tullock answer that in a free society, it will be in the interest of almost everyone to engage in peaceful cooperation and to respect it. But let us focus here on a society with a state whose main function would be to maintain a free society against external and internal threats.
In America, the laws of 27 states generally prohibit automakers from selling their vehicles directly to the public from company-owned stores, requiring them to use independent dealerships. (Selling online isn’t banned, but many customers apparently like a physical place where they can see the thing and get more information.) Things look better than half a dozen years ago. , when all 50 states had come, in the previous 25 years, to ban all sales in manufacturers’ stores. It is doubtful, however, that the state of public opinion has improved much instead of infatuation with electric vehicles (EVs).
Tesla has won the privilege of selling care in its own stores in a few of the restrictive states, but resistance from independent dealerships and political orthodoxy are now hard to break. What is the political orthodoxy justifying these prohibitions?
Don Hall, president of the Virginia Automobile Dealers Association, puts it bluntly:
When you have one person controlling all the marbles, you get marbles when they want to give them to you.
The suggestion is that the state and the incumbent rent seeking the companies control all the marbles. That resembles democracy as ancient collective freedom as opposed to modern freedom. Another example: an EV startup, Rivian, failed in its efforts to establish its own stores in Georgia. The president of the senate Butch Millerwho is also a Honda dealer, said, apparently referring to Rivian lobbyist Jim Chen (“The man from Rivian who wants to change the way we buy cars“, the wall street journalSeptember 17, 2022):
Why should 11 million Georgians change the way they do business to accommodate just one individual?
In a free enterprise economy, by definition, an entrepreneur is allowed to challenge, through competition and “creative destructionwhat all the other companies are doing. Even though there was only a Georgian willing to buy a car from a manufacturer willing to sell it directly, the two would be free to trade. Note that if there was only one of these Georgians, or a very small number of them, there would be no reason for any car dealership or politician to worry; they must fear that many consumers would like the alternative they ban.
It is not to “accommodate” an individual, even if there was only one, that 11 million Georgians “should” have to change their habits. In a free society, as opposed to a socialist or fascist one, no one is forced to change lanes. No consumer or producer can force everyone, let alone 11 million Georgians, to change their peaceful ways. But in such a society, a firm would certainly be free to offer on its own land to sell a car to any individual wishing to buy one. The only “accommodation” for an individual is to recognize that he has the same freedom as any of the 11 million others. It’s called consumer sovereignty and free enterprise.
We can relate this problem to Gary Gerstle’s book Freedom and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government (Princeton University Press, 2015—see my opinion in Regulation). Gerstle argued that the US Constitution created a limited central government but allowed states to be little democratic leviathans. The many examples included slavery and official racism and also sometimes careful regulation of businesses.
One hypothesis (which Gerstle, a fan of “good” leviathans, does not consider) is that the American Constitution suffered from the same flaw as, although to a lesser extent, the French Constitution. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 and even more, that of 1793 tried to marry individual freedom and the sovereignty of the people, an impossible feat. In his book Liberalism (Paris, 1903), where you will find the French text of the two Declarations, Emile Faguet wrote:
If the right of the people means its sovereignty, which is exactly what the authors of the [French] The bills of rights said that the people have the right, as sovereign, to take away individual rights. And this is the conflict. To write in the same declaration of rights both the right of the people and the rights of man, the sovereignty of the people and freedom for example, on an equal footing, amounts to putting water and fire together, and ask them to please agree. [My translation]
[In the original:] If the right of the people is sovereignty, which is precisely what the authors of the Declarations said, the people have the right, in their sovereignty, to suppress all the rights of the individual. And here is the conflict. To put in the same declaration the rights of the people and the rights of man, the sovereignty of the people and freedom, for example, on an equal basis, is to pour water and fire into them and then to ask them to be good enough to arranger set.