In a meeting I attended last week, the ‘Marketplace of Ideas’ was used as a Classical Liberal defence and retort to Critical Theorists when the latter asset their theory of Critical Consciousness and Social Change. The Classical Liberals say, in effect – “Let a thousand flowers bloom, and the best ideas will come to the surface” But I sympathise with the criticism of this for two key reasons:
- Inertia. While a new idea may have merit, there is a risk to its application in terms of potential unintended consequences, relative to the status quo. “Better the Devil you know”. So the ‘new idea’ is rejected as too risky. The same happens in entrepreneurism and in financial markets. In this way, new ideas may have merit, on balance, but may still not be adopted. Therefore change happens more/too slowly than what is optimal or fair.
- Unconscious Bias: Yes, we all carry biases. And so a new idea likely to benefit a minority may be rejected my the majority because they are limited in their understanding or ‘feeling’ for the likely beneficiaries. In a voting ‘one-person-one-vote’ democracy, the minority may always be shouted down, despite their idea being superior – not because the majority are deliberately unfair, but because the majority cannot perceive the good case of the minority sufficiently. It’s an Empathy problem, occurring at a mass unconscious level within the majority.