What J.D. Vance Gets Wrong About Hamilton (and Markets and Milton Friedman)

Vice President J.D. Vance believes that conservatives should abandon any commitment to free markets and limited government, in favor of what he characterizes as a more “Hamiltonian” view of government’s role in American life and the economy. As Vance has recently explained, the ideas of Milton Friedman can only work if there are “Christian guardrails” and a virtuous citizenry. Insofar as those prerequisites are lacking, Vance suggests, the government needs to take a more active role.

Andrew Langer of the Institute for Liberty explains some of the follies in Vance’s account in the Wall Street Journal. As Langer details, Vance seems to misunderstand markets, the importance of limited government, and the Hamiltonian ideals he purports to embrace. in the op-ed, “What JD Vance Gets Wrong About Hamilton,” Langer notes

Mr. Vance’s invocation of Hamilton obscures a fundamental disagreement extending back to the founding. Hamilton was a great statesman, but his political economy wasn’t the uncontested expression of American republicanism. . .

Notes Langer, the policy choice today “isn’t between the authentically American Hamilton and the alien Friedman. It is the continuation of an old American argument over centralization, economic direction and individual liberty.”

Vance seems to think that adherence to free market principles (such as it was) is responsible for virtue’s decline. Yet as Langer notes, this is a bit backwards.

Mr. Vance’s history of America’s institutional decline may have the causation backward. Laissez-faire economics didn’t create the welfare state. It didn’t transfer responsibility for human needs from local communities to Washington. Over several generations, government programs assumed functions previously performed by families, churches, mutual-aid societies, fraternal organizations and local charities.

Government expansion didn’t single-handedly cause the decline of religious participation or civic life. But public provision frequently displaced voluntary provision. Americans increasingly looked to bureaucracies rather than to neighbors and communities for assistance.

Mr. Vance now cites the weakness of these institutions as a reason laissez-faire is no longer sufficient. But if government expansion weakened them, the answer can’t be another round of centralization. That creates a self-reinforcing cycle: Government assumes responsibilities once exercised by civil society; civil society weakens; its weakness then becomes evidence that government must assume still more responsibility.

Langer concludes:

Government has a legitimate role in protecting rights, enforcing contracts, punishing fraud and preserving the conditions of ordered liberty. It can’t manufacture faith, belonging, solidarity or moral purpose through economic planning. Those arise from relationships freely entered and responsibilities willingly undertaken.

People don’t flourish because government determines how the economy should serve them. When people are free to pursue better lives, flourishing follows. A free society benefits from strong moral institutions—but neither markets nor liberty depends on government to impose them.

It would be good if more of our political leaders understood this.