Capitalism and Ugly Big Box Stores

Tucker Carlson has long been opposed the supposed excesses of capitalism in the United States. He has opposed production automation and complains about the abundance of Dollar Stores that are a visual blight on communities. He portrays a market-oriented economy as an object created in an ivory tower by libertarian economists which acts contrary to the will of the people at large, and its shortcomings must be corrected by government action. Thomas Sowell responds that the market is not a tool created in a university classroom for politicians to tinker with, but rather the market is simply millions of people exercising their right to produce and exchange goods and services with one another. Sowell writes that depicting the market as an object separate from the people who participate in it gives central planners permission to restrict "...the freedom of individuals to transact with one another on mutually agreeable terms, and to depict this restriction of their freedom as rescuing people from the 'dictates' of the impersonal market..." (p. 569). Dollar Stores exist because thousands of Americans prefer them to the available alternatives. Those who have contempt for ugly box stores and wish to eliminate them through government action are ultimately showing their contempt for the people who shop there. Milton Friedman writes that the reason central planners dislike the market economy so much is "It gives [people] what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself" (p. 19). 

References

Milton Friedman (2020). Capitalism and Freedom. The University of Chicago Press. [originally published in 1962].

Thomas Sowell (2015). Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (5th Ed.). Basic Books.