J.D. Vance Wants a Free Market for Crypto. What About Everything Else?
Vance says "you've gotta let these people make decisions on their own." He should try that approach more generally.
Vice President J.D. Vance is not ignorant about the power of the free market. He's just very selective about when that principle ought to apply.
"What you shouldn't have is a dictatorial government that tells certain industries they're not allowed to do what they need to do," Vance said in an interview with Newsmax last week. "You've gotta let these people make decisions on their own. And that's sort of been our approach."
When I saw that clip on Twitter, I did a double-take. At first, I thought it must be some fake AI video—but, no, that's the real Vance saying real words about the value of a laissez faire approach to economic policy.
The problem is that Vance applies that thinking in a very narrow way. In the Newsmax interview, he was talking about the Trump administration's approach to regulating cryptocurrency. As he explained, "Our approach in the Trump administration is to say, let people innovate, let people figure this stuff out on their own. If the critics of Bitcoin are right—I happen to think they're wrong—that will eventually win out in the marketplace."
That's exactly right. Like all currencies, bitcoin only has as much value as its users are willing to bestow upon it. The same is true for every other piece of cryptocurrencies—including the many junk coins that probably shouldn't be worth the bits they are printed on. It is the collective consciousness of the market that will decide whether bitcoin succeeds or fails in the long run, and the government ought not to put its thumb on that scale.
Vance's position on bitcoin is made more noteworthy because of how far out of step it seems with his stated views—and those of the Trump administration, more generally—on a range of other important economic issues. From trade to immigration (which is an economic issue, yes) to minutiae like where American consumers buy their toasters and how many dolls American kids get to play with, the Trump administration is demanding more dictatorial government that tells industries exactly what to do.
Just last week, Vance wrote a letter to The Wall Street Journal praising President Franklin D. Roosevelt for his willingness to do the exact opposite of letting people make decisions on their own. "One needn't look far in American history for examples of lawmakers wielding the market to the betterment of our people," he wrote.
As economist Thomas Sowell points out in a response to Vance's letter, "FDR's greatest contribution to military production in World War II was putting an end to his incessant interventions in the economy, which had created prolonged uncertainty that needlessly extended the Great Depression of the 1930s."
Just as it did then, more central planning now will make Americans poorer.
The benefits of the free market should not be reserved exclusively for people who invent and use cryptocurrency. You've gotta let people make economic decisions on their own, Vance says. Exactly. The Trump administration should let Americans hire who they want and buy what they want, regardless of where in the world those workers and products might originate. And it should do that for the same reason that it makes sense to leave crypto alone: So that innovation can occur, markets can work, and consumers get access to the widest range of options possible.
