Adam Smith's Free-Market Principles Can Solve America's Looming Problems
Source: https://www.facebook.com/americanspectator/. "America’s Best of Times, Worst of Times: Can Adam Smith Save the Future? | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics." October 25, 2026. spectator.org
The Gist
The author says America is rich but faces real threats like huge debt, an aging population, and weak schools. His answer is to follow Adam Smith: rely more on free markets and less on government, including in schools, pensions, and health care. He argues markets have helped America outperform Europe and spread power among ordinary people instead of bureaucrats.
Conclusion
America should let markets allocate resources more and government less, through steps like privatizing schools, pensions, and health care provision, because this would revive growth, solve the country's major long-term problems, and renew optimism about the future.
Premises
- America is currently very prosperous but faces serious long-term problems, including runaway national debt, an aging population supported by fewer workers, mediocre public schools, declining birth rates and faith, and a rising anti-capitalist political movement.
- Many of these problems can still be addressed, since most people have decades of life left, which is long enough to make solving them worthwhile.
- America has widened its economic lead over Europe this century by allowing markets to operate with far less bureaucratic interference.
- Public schooling dominated by teacher unions has lowered student learning and stifled entrepreneurial initiative, while the pension and health care systems for the elderly are inefficient and bankrupt.
- Markets disperse power to millions of households, whereas government concentrates it in bureaucrats, and concentrated power tends to corrupt.
- Adam Smith's market-oriented economics, associated with the Industrial Revolution and a massive worldwide reduction in poverty, is a more reliable guide than Keynes or recent Nobel laureates.
Assumptions
- The prosperity Americans enjoy is mainly attributable to market freedom rather than to government investment, institutions, or other factors.
- America's economic lead over Europe is caused by lighter regulation, not by other differences such as demographics, natural resources, or geography.
- Privatizing schools, pensions, and health care would improve outcomes rather than worsen access, equity, or costs.
- Government failure is generally worse than market failure in these sectors.
- Problems like debt, climate change, and national security can be mitigated by market mechanisms or are less pressing than market-based reforms.
- The historical link between Smith's ideas and the Industrial Revolution supports applying market principles to present-day policy.