Matt Ridley shares America’s eroding faith in institutions, but he doesn’t much believe in supervillains. He is a true libertarian, to an extreme you rarely see in American public discourse.
Similarly, I wrote that He offers full-frontal libertarianism.
Unfortunately, Tankersley goes on to say
In the world Ridley sketches in the book, everything will eventually work itself out for the better, thanks to free markets and survival of the fittest — so no one feels any obligation to try to change things for the good.
This is a straw man. No libertarian, including Ridley, expresses such a point view. Libertarianism is perfectly compatible with individuals feeling an obligation to change things for the good. What libertarianism rejects is the notion of equating “changing things for the good” with government planning and coercion. The day to day commercial activities of people change things for the good in an inexorable fashion, although the process works by trial and error, so it is never flawless. The attempts by politicians and government officials to change things for the good tend to work out less well on average.
I think Tankersley making a genuine point, which is more than a strawman when you strip away the anticaptalist wording.
“day to day commercial activites of people change things for the good” is our spin on what Tankersly spins as “everything will eventually work itself out for the better, thanks to free markets”. In addition we free market types generally claim that human attempts at non-profit do gooding are much less powerful than our commercial work (when it isn’t actively harmful!)
Put the two to together and Tankersley has a point when he claims that we boil all the useful activity in the world down to the free market taking care of everything.
Tankersley was speaking somewhat sarcasticly and selectively, misrepresenting what Matt Ridley’s point about the spontaneous order that competitive free markets bring.
You can be sure Tankersley is not a fan of free markets in place of government intervention… or skyhooks as Ridley puts it in his book.