State Fundamentalism is a Real Problem

George Soros argued that market fundamentalism is now more of a threat to an open society than any totalitarian ideology. Calling a social democratic strong, in practice authoritarian, state an open society is very questionable, although Soros' role model Karl Popper certainly was guilty of it, too. A social democratic state is quite a closed system, where the political elite maintains power firmly in its hands. George  Soros's amateur economics does not contain any credible argument that his proposed social democratic world government work even as well as the current or a free market economy.

Similar claims are made by Joseph Stiglitz. They are united by a staunch believe in a socialist state's superiority and contempt for supporters of a free market. They do not, however, offer convincing evidence for their faith. Joseph Stiglitz has found a number of market imperfections during his academic career but then he makes an unjustified leap of faith to the superiority of a socialist state. Market imperfections do not prove that the state would work even as perfectly. The end of the 2000s' recession has increased support for socialism but problems of a mixed economy are not a rational justification of socialism. Dogmatic socialist Stiglitz thinks all the problems of a mixed economy are caused by a free market economy and that the socialist state should be able to solve all the problems. Socialists make that kind of mistake typically. 

Nick Hanauer did not even bother to try to make an argument scientifically, but resorts to calling libertarians most extreme individualists, misrepresenting their views and comparing them to communists. In that he is not alone but the fallacy of moderation is common. He does not realize that a libertarian free society would be communitarian but without a forced communitarianism. He assumes, without any rational justification, that the current state is the right solution and just needs fine-tuning. Most people are conservatives who follow the leader, so the only thing the political elite needs to do is to drive the state to their desired condition, no matter how crazy, and their popularity is assured. It is lame to compare libertarians to communists and then defend half-communism against a free market economy. 

Market fundamentalism in itself is a pejorative term. The social democratic ideology and socialism in general are largely based on emotion and not science. Scientific socialism is based on an emotional condemnation of capitalism and then it is concluded that it should be replaced by something else although there is no information about what should be built to replace it. Socialists have managed marketing well, but their product has remained weak. From the point of view of marketing psychology, the enemy image building has been very successful when preaching their own product has at least recently succeeded less well because of bad experiences. Still, most people continue to accept the basic premises of socialism that capitalism cannot deliver security but there is a need for significant government intervention in the economy.State fundamentalism is a much worse problem than market fundamentalism. The fundamentalisms of socialism and the green movement have reached the states of official ideologies and also the official science. Climate science is not worthwhile as a career if one does not wholeheartedly support the official position of the government. The same also applies to the social sciences. Both ideologies seek to present themselves as sciences but defend themselves by means of a fundamentalist faith. The dissidents are labeled as denialists or market fundamentalists. This is a phenomenon similar to the science of the Soviet Union in which scientific socialism was the official truth.