Thursday evening the business, faith and common good speaker series welcomed legal scholar and philosopher  Gary Chartier of La Sierra University to Creighton’s campus.  Dr. Chartier, identifies as a “left-wing market anarchist”, who is pro-free-market although critical of much of capitalism as it stands today.

According to Dr. Chartier, in the current market system, the state works with particular companies and interests to help dispossess people of opportunities and to maintain structures which disallow competition.  The problem is the state-sanctioned mechanisms by which those who have keep those who don’t from achieving a share of the wealth.  This can happen through monopolies, lobbied-regulations which favor established companies (often lobbied for by those companies protected), etc.  The problem, according to Dr. Chartier, is in part the state-ist control of markets and so the solution is to supplant the state governments (which are themselves area-monopolies over particular land areas) with other forms of institutions, such as mutual aid societies.

Chartier agrees with Michael Novak that we are “more sinners than saints” but state control is not the solution because state control of aspects of society merely consolidates power into the hands of a few.  What is better he thinks is a distribution to a multiplicity of institutions, but not states.  Government is no panacea to the problem of self-centeredness of individuals.  It only exacerbates it.

Justice will come from greater liberty, Chartier says, not only because people will take more responsibility for their actions (since no one will bail them out (GM, Banks in 2007)) and without state-sanctioned crony capitalism, real free markets will exist without the corporate special interest subsidies and other freedom-limiting artificial barriers to truly free markets and liberty.  As it is, real competition and real ability to enter the market are both restrained by artificial constructs of the cooperation between established corporate entities and governments who work to protect those companies.

Chartier made it clear that he is not interested in eliminating regulation in order to  allow the large corporations to allow them to do whatever they want.  He thinks the regulations in place are what sustain the corporations in many cases.   He instead advocates that the rich ‘eat themselves’ by eliminating the subsidies and special regulations which protect them and oppress competition, which would lead to actual competition which would likely undermine the companies which are presently protected.  He argues that if the state sanctioned protection of these companies was eliminated, they would collapse, and people would experience more justice through the real freedom of the market.

Dr. Chartier brought a thought provoking and challenging view of the market, and Creighton was blessed to have him come to campus!  — Andy Gustafson

Note on Dr. Chartier:  Gary Chartier (La Sierra University) is Distinguished Professor of Law and Business Ethics and Associate Dean of the Tom and Vi Zapara School of Business at La Sierra University in Riverside, California. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of thirteen other books, including Public Practice, Private Law (Cambridge, 2016), Anarchy and Legal Order (Cambridge, 2013), Economic Justice and Natural Law (Cambridge, 2009), and (with Chad Van Schoelandt) The Routledge Handbook of Anarchy and Anarchist Thought (Routledge, 2019). His byline has appeared over forty times in journals including the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Legal Theory, and Law and Philosophy. He is a member of the American Philosophical Association and the Alliance of the Libertarian Left and a senior fellow of the Center for a Stateless Society.

THE BFCGI SPEAKER SERIES IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY: