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approximated, the market offers individuals as many (or as few) votes
as they have dollars. Moreover, an odd discount mechanism works by
which the richer you are, the more you get per dollar; for instance, a
small saver will get lower interest on his savings than a big saver and
will pay a higher interest on loans he takes. Though one can argue that
both politics and market relations are bound to reflect overall the
existing structure of power and privileges-inequities politics modi–
fies, the market magnifies.
Kristol and Bell argue that you can use the market to introduce the
social changes you desire, but this ignores the need to deal with the
powerful people who oppose such changes, whose opposition can
scarcely be countered without political mobilization of those who favor
change. Societal stability is a classic conservative value. It was always a
conservative line to call upon the underprivileged to sit still so as not to
upset national unity, law and order. These arguments gloss over the
possibility that a class of people may find their needs better served in a
different societal structure (hence one cannot assume that they will be
scared off by fear of overly disturbing this one). Studies by William
Gamson and others show that the fear of instability and violence is one
of the main reasons those in power eventually come around to make
concessions to the have-nots. As for the argument that if the underpriv–
ileged voice their needs or demand their entitlements, the society will
erupt in a war of all-against-all, the result of unreasonable, fanatic,
intransigent minorities, the brief history of the turbulent sixties
suggests quite the opposite: given rather limited concessions to minori–
ties (and youth) violence (never all that high on a historically com–
parative scale) subsided and they returned to working within the
system-rather than to overthrowing it.
Thus, after decades of relative neglect of the conservative position,
we now have an articulate new group of advocates. They come in two
wrappings, or more precisely, one quite unwrapped and one carefully
packaged. Each to his own taste.
