Alan Greenspan and the Myth of the True Believer

From AlterNet, Naomi Klein meditates on whether the free market fundamentalists really believe their own bullshit:

Yet what is most interesting about Greenspan's story is what it reveals about the ambiguous role of ideas in the free-market crusade. Given that Greenspan is perhaps the world's most powerful living free-market ideologue, it is significant that his commitment to ideology seems rather thin and perfunctory -- less zealous belief, more convenient cover story.

Much of the debate around Greenspan's legacy has revolved around the matter of hypocrisy, of a man preaching laissez faire who repeatedly intervened in the market to save the wealthiest players. The economy that is Greenspan's legacy hardly fits the definition of a libertarian market but looks very much like another phenomenon described in his book: "When a government's leaders routinely seek out private-sector individuals or businesses and, in exchange for political support, bestow favors on them, the society is said to be in the grip of 'crony capitalism.'"

He was talking about Indonesia under Suharto, but my mind went straight to Iraq under Halliburton. Greenspan is currently warning the world about a dangerous looming backlash against capitalism. Apparently, this has nothing at all to do with the policies of negligent deregulation that were his trademark.

More here.

Klein later asserts that she doesn't buy Greenspan's true believer status, but it's hard to agree with her. Even though these free market cheerleaders contradict themselves pretty much all the time, it cannot be taken as evidence that they're conscious of what they're doing. Sure, the whole laissez faire conceptual framework really only exists to rhetorically justify vast social injustices, and I would venture to guess that on some level these people know it, but they have to believe. If they don't believe, they're bad people, and nobody wants to be a bad person.

I'm an actor. From my many years of playing roles on stage, I've become aware of how easy it is to believe things that aren't true. I mean, that's what actors do: we try to behave as honestly as possible under imaginary circumstances; ideally, if you can give yourself over to the fiction, you give a good, realistic, emotionally honest performance. This isn't some freak ability that only actors have. This is a human ability. When we feel we need to believe something, we'll believe it. That's why so many people believe in God, despite the fact that there is absolutely no evidence for doing so--people need the reassurance that there is some conscious sense to the universe, that we are being looked over by the cosmic Alpha Male, thereby satisfying the powerful genetic desires we share with other primates.

In short, it is not only possible that people both believe and disbelieve certain propositions at the same time, it's downright commonplace. It's human nature. In short, we are not rational beings. Yet another reason everything's going to pot.

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