Repression by Free Market

During a visit to the Thai King's exhibit of contemporary artwork in the ancient, belabored Thai style, I commented to a fellow visitor about the tragedy that such an art form would prove unsustainable under Western pressures for productivity. I proffered the comment carelessly, expecting a sympathetic affirmation. The answer I received, however, took the comment as an opening spar: "Personally, I don't care that this would never happen in a market economy. If there's no demand, there's no value."

This reverberated through my entire system as inordinately dogmatic, even dangerous. Especially in art as the expression of human creativity, I have always thought that no tiny piece of diversity should be suppressed, no matter the censor or cause. After all, the market is supposed to be the guardian of diversity. The idea that the majority or the consuming population should determine what ideas should exist and therefore justify the death of others confers what I consider an undue moral authority on the market. This is the classic Millian social dialogue in its purest form.

First, the market is easily swayed by prevailing views. This is easily demonstrated by the existence of varying markets across the planet. However, this is not necessarily an adequeate check against the arbitrary disappearance of certain expressions or thoughts, since they may become caught in a contrary market, and there is anyway quite a feedback on demand in weaker markets from supply in stronger ones.

But why need we fight to preserve these crafts anyway? Unless they have intrinsic value, the arbitrary decision to exclude them should scarcely matter, regardless of the agent of exclusion. At the Thai exhibit, I was particularly struck because I considered the inimitable intricacy of the art to be an intrinsically good characteristic. However, in all honesty, perhaps my fellow visitor's comment was based on the opposite view. The key was that consensus was lacking. If only one person thinks the product is intrinsically good, and they aren't strong enough to convince others of the same truth, why need the market paternalistically foster it?

What bothered me was the frightening reality that the selection criterion here was not the intrinsic good of a product - which is, in my view, subjective anyway - but the believer's ability to sell it. It's unclear to me that one's skill as a salesman or debater are indicative of the caliber of one's judgment. The chief problem here is the paradox that, in art, many demands need pre-existing supply and many supplies need pre-existing demand. One thinks immediately of Howard Roark and his employer in Rand's The Fountainhead: their architecture was in a class all its own, edging them from the NYC limelight. Their faith that a clientele would naturally emerge was hopelessly optimistic to say the least.

Of course, every government lacks the resources to prop up every nascent product. Rather, I think what is needed is a certain openness of mind - a realization that the market's declaration is neither infallible nor sacred. I admit this is unsatisfactory as a solution, but I think it is practically necessary to tolerate even the least plausible ideas without dogmatic repression. After all, this is how I was able to see gold textured so beautifully that a barking deer seemed to have fur that looked so real and soft that I wanted to reach through the glass to stroke it.