Critics who are dissatisfied with America’s free-enterprise economy reject the notion that people’s voluntary associations in markets, civil society, and families benefit the common good. By implication, these critics want whoever is in power politically to define the common good.
On the other hand, a true free-enterprise system that maximizes people’s ability to freely cooperate to improve their lives produces the closest to a broadly agreed-upon version of the common good. One of the main reasons that the critics’ approach has repeatedly failed is that it denies this reality. Instead, it empowers one small group of people to define the common good for everyone else. Tragically, supporters of this scheme ignore the evidence that more economic freedom leads to more opportunity and more prosperity, and that government barriers to economic freedom reduce people’s ability to improve their lives.
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