As I've gone through the first year of my doctoral program in Social Work, it's been a weird journey to see where I'm taken by the currents of my coursework, independent scholarship, and political reading. I came into this program wanting to understand how a social worker (or anyone really) could actually be a Bleeding Heart Libertarian in practice. There are lots of philosophers who provide the headspace for us to play in. But I didn't know how to live in that place, to make sense of the work I would do as a social scientist and social work practitioner from within that philosophical orientation. After two semesters of accordion churning, zooming in and zooming out, I feel as though I'm finally on a trajectory that leads me to knowing my philosophical basis and turning that into good practice and research.
The battles I have fought so rested in a few more comfortable areas. I looked at Austrian economics and left-libertarianism in light of the Burrell & Morgan paradigms and explored how each answered questions about the nature of reality and knowledge. I looked at applications of public choice theory in social work delivery systems and in social welfare programs. This was all relatively familiar ground, though it was thin ice as I don't know as much as I appear to.
Last week, I had the wonderful opportunity to present on some advocacy work I did against the living wage to the faculty and fellow students at my school. It was an enlivening experience, and I received a great amount of validation from my colleagues. But I hit upon a problem that I don't yet know how to deal with. I found that I pussyfooted around supply-side and market-friendly solutions to social problems. In my poster, I had many centrally planned solutions like a Negative Income Tax (or UBI), occupational licensing reform, and school choice/education reform. However, I didn't touch on the engine of capitalism itself! It's all well and good to criticize the objectivist fallacies of central planning and government solutions, but it's for nothing without championing the subjectivist, ecological (in the Vernon Smith-ian sense) market. The market is the subjectivist means by which institutions such as justice emerge. The market is the signifier for the process of subjectivist social change. Even Marxism holds that the economic structure is the driving force of all of society, even shaping our very consciousness. Yet, I neglected to champion its justice-producing effects. Why?
Well, I guess my answer that seeing the justice in the supply side of economics is a difficult thing for me to make my own, since these are fairly hoary conservative tropes. It's difficult to differentiate the conservative position from the BHL position. There is some work there on the left-libertarian side, but it's difficult for me to reach. These arguments are also far less palatable in academia, I imagine, so maybe I shy away from them for that reason.
In closing, I found myself referencing a Facebook conversation between Emily and myself. She posted about how the Doritos Locos taco at Taco Bell had reportedly created 3,000 more jobs at the chain. And she joked that she felt good for contributing to something good. I sarcastically commented back that embracing the justice of the supply side of economics is a slippery slope. Both comments were meant in jest, but I think the concept is fairly true. Looking at the engine of capitalism as a force for equality and good is really my third rail, and one that I need to come to terms with as I continue to develop my ideas.
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