Liberty: Shaping attitudes toward liberty, choice and responsibility

Boyes speculates, over on Liberty, on the underlying causes for what appears to be a shift in the general attitude toward capitalism and freedom.

In part, he wonders what influence the institution of higher education plays in shaping the underlying belief system of the general population. Dan Klein has analysis that plays into this discussion - http://www.criticalreview.com/2004/pdfs/klein_stern.pdf. He concludes that instructors in the social sciences at the college level are overwhelmingly consist in their selection of government driven policies over market driven policies.

Klein in other work, describes the process by which ideologies govern hiring decisions in colleges, that is faculty who serve on hiring committees tend to select colleagues from institutions similar those attended by the incumbent faculty. This would imply that the newly hired faculty have shared beliefs.

This begs the question of the level of impact or influence that college faculty exert over undergraduates. That is, do the beliefs and attitudes of faculty (who in social sciences at least) appear to be heavily weighted toward pro government/interventionist policies and hostile to market policies driven by liberty and freedom have an impact upon undergraduates? This is an important question and the data that Boyes cites suggests that there is in fact a relationship at work that extends the incumbent ideology to students.

So, to the extent that this relationship exists, a part of the explanation may lie with higher education.

I wonder to what extent the institution of the media plays a role in the pro interventionist ideology that seems to be evolving in the US today? That is, can the various channels of the media be seen to have a predominant ideology in regard to freedom, liberty and choice and, if so, is that ideology pro or anti free market?

Another institution that would seem to play a part in the evolution of attitude is religion. Economic freedom and the resulting growth and expansion of choice and standard of living have been limited to a very few countries. The recent discussion over on CATO regarding modernity points out the central role played by institutions and the apparent change in America in attitude toward capitalism naturally raises the question has there been a change in the institution of religion that may have simulated or supported this change?

The intersection of the two above institutions can be seen here:



Boyes motivates us to consider what factors that have lead to an important change in the informal belief systems in the US that directly and indirectly impact liberty and freedom.