NO EMPLOYEES, NO DIVERSITY:

[Inez]  Stepman does not think that Friedman's faith in markets suffices for dealing with the wokeism, gender ideology, identity politics, CRT, ESG, DEI, and so forth presently sweeping their way through American culture. Combatting such problems may require, she believes, a "vision of government too energetic to fit comfortably into the vision described in Capitalism and Freedom," though she does not specify the form such energy might take.

More fundamentally, Stepman wonders whether, quoting Kristol, the "self" that is "realized under the conditions of liberal capitalism is a self that despises liberal capitalism, and uses its liberty to subvert and abolish a free society?" She then argues that "the free market alone cannot muster any defense against the self-destructive and nihilistic impulses that threaten, not just the capitalist system, but the entirety of the American project." To paraphrase Kristol: free marketers can easily refute Marxist economics, but capitalists qua capitalists have nothing to say when confronted by Friedrich Nietzsche and his disciples on the Left and Right.

Tweet   @brothersjudd