Tucker Carlson has been a brave and erudite commentator for some years now, but I’m not alone in noticing a long shift in his overall attitude toward market economics and capitalism generally. In particular, he has now gone after libertarianism by name.
We can tease out what he means here, but let’s not argue about terms such as capitalism and libertarianism and whether and to what extent we practice them. The definitions are all over the map, and that could take many evenings to sort out.
My own preference is to define capitalism as the voluntary matrix of material exchange relationships rooted in private ownership with an extremely limited role for state intervention, if it exists at all. I regard libertarianism as the political system that puts a priority on freedom and choice above every other political and social agenda that would override the rights and freedoms of adults. I also happen to believe that both systems are most consistent with social good, cultural health, and the good life.
I’m aware, too, that the world is flooded with intellectuals who use these words in different ways, mostly as horses to flog and blame for all existing ills. More often than not, their real complaints trace not to markets as such but to the scams perpetuated by a corporatist combination of state and business, which always leads to floods of corruption.
It’s striking and disturbing to me that, in times when the failure of the state has never been more obvious and overwhelming, we aren’t seeing an intellectual rush to embrace freedom but rather to blame it for the problems that actually have a different root. The left and right have decidedly turned against what used to be called liberalism; that is, the confidence that society manages itself best without imposition from centralized elites of any sort. Liberalism has fallen on gravely hard times, for reasons we can discuss some other time.
What immediately becomes an issue is Mr. Carlson’s specific attack on the dollar stores. This I can’t understand. It seems like if you want to attack enterprise or market forces, there would be plenty of other candidates and examples of corporate corruption. We could talk about Pfizer, Microsoft, Raytheon, countless green energy companies, the banking establishment, or even Wall Street, which has a crony addiction more intense than at any time in U.S. history.
Why attack the dollar stores?
He could be attacking the fact that people need to shop there because they’re poor, but it doesn’t seem like this is what he’s saying. He could mean that he’s against large franchises that move into towns and crowd out local businesses, but he didn’t say this either.
Nor is it obvious that this is what dollar stores do. It isn’t competing with small businesses, as far as I can tell, but rather with much larger and pricier chains such as Walmart, CVS, and Marshalls. It seems to me that this store is bringing products that people need to a lower-end demographic that can’t afford the fancier places to shop. I can’t see what’s wrong with that either.
Based on what he says here, Mr. Carlson’s main objection seems to be aesthetic. He finds them ugly, perhaps outside and perhaps inside, too. This is odd. Most times when I see a dollar store, it isn’t in the fashionable areas of town with the steakhouses and oyster bars. They seek out cheaper real estate in different parts of town because they know their customer market. They want to be where their buyers live, which is to say where they’re needed.
You know what their market is? It’s poor people. That’s right. That’s who shops there, and they get good stuff for the cheapest possible price. I’m not speaking abstractly here. I know these stores well, because I shop in them all the time. My own Christmas tree is filled with items from there, not fancy things from Bloomingdale’s and Tiffany’s.
I’m super impressed by places such as Dollar Tree or Dollar General that have the same stuff that you could buy in fancy places but for a fraction of the price. For people like me, who are willing to rub shoulders with the workers and peasants, there are great rewards.
I was just there a few days ago, noticing that everything there is now $1.25. I asked an employee how long this could last. She confirmed that they’re having huge problems making the store work given today’s inflation. So they’re on the verge of changing the whole model. The dollar stores will have to change to allow prices to be whatever they have to be. They’re hoping that they can still retain the customer base.
In any case, it’s beyond me why anyone would attack them but for one reason: cultural snobbery. This isn’t a personal criticism of Mr. Carlson. It’s just that there’s a long history, on the left and right, of criticizing capitalist institutions that serve the poor on the grounds that such institutions produce mass ugliness and attract the rabble.
Two names from the 19th century come to mind: John Ruskin (1819–1900) and Oscar Wilde (1854–1900). Ruskin was from the right, a Tory who believed in the old ways and despised mass production for the masses. The simple reason was that Ruskin found it all distasteful. But his class was decidedly in the upper ranks, and he wanted for nothing. As a literary critic moving within high society, he could do nothing but sniff about how the masses of people could now afford what was only once available to the elites, although in a lesser-quality form. He resented how capitalism was having a leveling effect on material privilege.
Oscar Wilde was decidedly on the left and proclaimed himself socialist, although not of the Lenin/Stalin variety but of the more fashioned English upper-class type (Fabian). Although his origins were working class, his literary output was designed to appeal to the upper echelon.
As part of that, Wilde adopted a very similar outlook to Ruskin: putting down mass production and the supposed tackiness of popular novels, popular art, and popular furniture and interior design. Oscar longed for London streets filled only with white ties and top hats, not street urchins and disabled older people. It offended his sensibilities, and so he turned against the capitalist ethos entirely.
That seems to be where Mr. Carlson is going with all of this, but it’s truly beneath him. Sure, as a millionaire many times over, and deservedly so, he doesn’t need to shop at a dollar store. But it’s odd that he can’t see that for many, such stores are a godsend. They enable poor people to buy inexpensive Christmas decorations, cleaning products, trash bags, soap and shampoo, glassware, office supplies, chips and salsa, and much more besides. If they had to get all of this elsewhere, they would have to spend more of their limited income on such basics.
Of all the problems in the world today, one might suppose that he could pick a better target. Still, his bias is deeply instructive. Since the end of the Middle Ages and the dissolution of feudalism, capitalism has come under fire for its single greatest virtue: its capacity for democratizing access to material goods, turning the poor into the middle class and the middle class into the rich. One might suppose that this is a great thing. Who doesn’t like class mobility? It turns out that many intellectuals don’t like it, and they deploy their power over the public mind to stop it.
It’s all rather heartbreaking because I don’t think that Mr. Carlson has thought much about the implications of his rage against mass production. He spends his days on podcasts, while the people who get goods at the dollar stores and stand in the checkout lines dealing with ornery customers don’t have social media, much less access to podcasting platforms. They have to do old-fashioned work for a living, just as those who shop there have to, also.
These are the people who someone such as Mr. Carlson should be defending against the elites! We need his voice! The dollar stores need a defense, whereas Whole Foods and Bloomingdale’s don’t. The customers of Whole Foods and Bloomingdale’s have the power and the voice. They have the resources to spend one-third more on the best-possible foods and goods. Not so for everyone else. A good economic system should serve those who are less well off and not just the elites.
It’s truly sad to see Mr. Carlson joining the ranks of the Victorian upper classes in tearing down institutions that serve the poor. He should remember his intellectual obligations to speak for more people than just those with privilege.
Even better, I would like him to spend an hour in a dollar store and report back on what he sees. He'll see many people who don’t watch his show digging through wallets and purses hoping to have enough change to buy little special Christmas gifts for their children and extended families. Or Bibles ($1.25) and statues of Mary and Jesus ($1.25), coloring books, dolls, or trucks for children ($1.25). God bless them for it.
If I’ve misunderstood something here, I’m glad to be corrected. But he speaks as if everyone in his circle loathes the dollar stores, and maybe that’s true. I can’t share that perspective, and even find it dangerous, unless I’m missing something here.
