‘The Permanent Problem’ Review: The Soul and the Market

Critics allege that capitalism causes spiritual poverty. They misunderstand the proper role of an economic system

By Judge Glock. He reviewed the book The Permanent Problem: The Uncertain Transition from Mass Plenty to Mass Flourishing by Brink Lindsey. Excerpts:

"One wonders if Mr. Lindsey thinks capitalism is preventing people from organizing community gardens. If their adoption isn’t universal, one struggles to understand why we should demand that people plant them. And how many in the author’s crowd have done their part to restore civilization by moving into co-housing units, spaces typically reserved for impecunious 20-somethings? Perhaps the simplest explanation for the limited impact of these practices is that they work for some people but not for others.

Similar desires for small-scale production have a long history. John Ruskin, a Victorian art critic, raged at how the division of labor broke down traditional communities and turned people into automatons. William Morris, in the novel “News From Nowhere” (1890), imagined a world in which people returned to small-scale gardening and gave up shoddy consumerism. In the 1960s and ’70s, communal radicals and intellectuals such as E.F. Schumacher, in his book “Small Is Beautiful” (1973), made similar demands."

"no critic has attacked all consumption of all goods, only the goods the critic considered unnecessary."

"The other term for making things more affordable is economic growth—something that is ineluctably in conflict with a vision of producing more goods outside the market."

"He suggests more people could “build their own housing.” Beyond the fact that this would make housing immeasurably more expensive, these personal homebuilders would still have to buy the nails, lumber, shingles and—since the author is not a Luddite—communications and electrical wiring, HVAC systems and other complex goods from the market."

"The author recommends a domestic service corps, modeled on the military, to build infrastructure"

"Mr. Lindsey assures the reader that a government redistribution of goods will help people declare independence from both government and market."