Rod Nillsen
Markets and values (2008)

The message below to the Sydney Morning Herald columnist, Miranda Devine, was sent to her on 29th November 2008. No reply was received. It was written in response to her article in the Herald of 2008. You may read her article here. The message below has been slightly edited from the original.

YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN

Dear Miranda Devine,

I have just read your column in the Sydney Morning Herald of today, 29/11/08. I have often felt the urge to reply to some of your columns, but this weekend seems to be the first time I can do it.

You pass a judgment by referring to the show "The real housewives of Orange county" as "fabulously trashy". Well, I have never even heard of this show, but let's say I am prepared to accept that it is indeed "fabulously trashy".

But then, I wonder on what basis you are prepared to apparently assert that the audience for this show is so uninformed that they are prepared to watch "fabulouly trashy" stuff?

Are you saying that you know, better than the people who watch "The real housewives of Orange county", what they would, in fact, be better off watching?

If so, is this not exactly what the "right" accuses the "left" of supposedly knowing when the "left" proposes utopian programs for supposed social "improvement"? So, are you a "left-winger"?

Or are you saying that it is quite OK for people to watch "trash"? After all, if there is a profitable market for legal trash, as there undoubtedly is, on what basis can an economic liberal object to trash?

Of course. the former Prime Minster said that he thought that "Big Brother" was a "silly program" and that Channel 10 should take it off the air. But on what basis should an economic liberal like the former Prime Minister object to a legal profit-making show like "Big Brother"? Was Channel 10 not entitled to make legal profits?

For a Burkean-type conservative like myself there is an answer (the Liberal Party of Australia is not Burkean in my view). But for the economic liberal who wishes to be consistent, and not make arbitrary "flip-flops" all over the place, all such a person can say is "if there is a market for it, and if it is legal, it is OK".

The more general point I am making is that is that, for the the intellectually consistent economic liberal, actions and values are no more than an individual choice. For the economic liberal, people should make up their own minds in their own interests as they perceive it, and no one should make any judgment on it, as long as it is legal. Then, it is (mostly implicitly) imagined that an "invisible hand" will guarantee that all is for the best. (I do not share that imagining.)

So, economic liberalism inevitably produces intellectual and ethical relativism. (That is why I argued, incidentally, in an article in 'Quadrant' magazine, that there was a very considerable overlap in the mind-sets and effects of post modernism and economic liberalism in universities. But, of course, the Australian "right" could not care less what happens in Australian universities, except where it is considered to be due to the presence of the nefarious "left".)

In Australia, economically liberal commentators show no sign of being able to face up to these contradictions. Rather, like Humpty Dumpty, they would all rather believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

But then, of course, I should not be surprised. Much public comment in Australia is merely concerned to follow a political "line", rather than to ascertain the "truth" which is, as we are more-or-less told, a conceit rendered obsolete by acquiescing in the the vacillations of the market, and the epistemological strictures of postmodern relativism.

When I wrote to Senator George Brandis about his CHASS speech, I did not receive a reply. Similarly, I will be surprised if I receive a reply to this message.

But, you don't mess with the Zoltan. An amended version of these comments may appear in the future on my web page.

Sincerely,

Rod Nillsen

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