Tragedy of the Commonwealth and the Vision of Wendell Berry, The

Second, Berry's protectionism belies a similar mistrust for the individual to engage the marketplace freely. The local economy must be protected from the "moral and economic absurdity" of capitalism's free market, because without government protection or an "alternative economy," the people would attempt to "buy too low" and "sell too high."275 Without laws impeding competition, the people will be hopelessly divided, neighbor against neighbor, "into a class of winners and a class of losers," because "every transaction is meant to involve a winner and a loser."276 Without the proper tariffs, the "folly" of the "foolish" global economy will persist. Without artificial mechanisms designed to keep imported goods out of the commonwealth in order to protect local producers, Berry implicitly fears, individuals would buy those imported products at a price too low for their own good. His proposals presume that free market consumers who purchase imported and less expensive products at a price they are willing to pay will not realize that they invariably injure their own neighbor, endanger their commonwealth, and, in turn, undermine their own economic security.277

To cure such ignorance, Berry proposes that communities "strive to increase earnings ... within the community and decrease expenditures outside the community"278 and then "make sure that money paid into the local economy circulates within the community for as long as possible before it is paid out."279 This way, the commonwealth protects local producers against consumer whim, ignorance, and indifference-those same consumers that Berry condemns for not knowing the difference between the necessity of heat in the winter and the opulence of summer air conditioning.280 Whether Berry would pursue these proposals with the force of law is unclear, but that individuals should be asked to "buy locally" suggests that the interests of the local producer are in some ways more valued than the autonomous decisionmaking of the consumer who might prefer the imported goods and their lower prices over those made at home. Indeed, it is virtually impossible to foresee the preferences of a consumer market, leading Frederick Engels to observe,

No one knows how much of his particular article is coming on the market, nor how much of it will be wanted. No one knows whether his individual product will meet an actual demand, whether he will be able to make good his costs of production or even to sell his commodity at all.281

Thus, it would seem that the wise, custodial guardians of the local commonwealth's interests are those privileged with the foresight to recognize the inherent insecurity of the open market,282 and those who therefore raise tariffs, artificially limit holdings, production, and consumption, and otherwise protect against what Berry calls "economic anarchy."283

But this protectionist view of the market that Berry seems to hold fails to recognize what James Madison understood as the "diversity in the faculties of men."284 It is from these diverse faculties, Madison believed, that "the rights of property originate."285 For him,