It strikes me as weird, classical economists siding with social conservatives. The basics of market thoery should really have the economists on the side of the social liberationists. I think the reason they don’t comes down to the cost of labour, which is pretty much the biggest cost for a business. But this is stupid and short-sighted of business people. Rather than always trying to reduce the cost of labour, say by eroding workers rights, they should take it as a given, and find other ways to reduce the cost of labour, say by introducing new technology that increases the capacity of your workforce. Reducing labour costs is short-sighted but immediate, and thus gets focused on by business owners. The cycle goes like this; If I can reduce my costs (the biggest being labour), I can increase my profits, which means I can expand my business. The problem here is that the second part of the equation is left off, which goes; if I expand my business I need greater capacity (supply) to meet the greater demand, so I’ll need to expand my workforce, so my costs will go up. Which really is just supply rising to meet demand, which leaves your profits where you started.
The smart thing to do would be to maintain your costs, increase the capacity of your workforce (say by giving them better training, or investing in green energy and put power back into the energy grid). Then rather than using your increased capacity to expand your current market, which would easily drive prices down (static demand plus increase supply equals falling prices to meet the market), find a new market. But how do you find a new market? Well, essentially, in a capitalist first-world economy, you create one, which is what marketing is all about.
And this is why I think gay marriage is pretty much inevitable in Australia.
Because while there’s lots of business clamouring to cut labour costs, there’s also a lot that given up on that and are clamouring for new markets. So it goes like this; increased capacity plus static demand (or in the case of Australia, rapidly increasing supply plus reasonably increasing demand) equals excess supply. This could be stored, say by purchasing government bonds (which takes supply out of the market), or by finding new demand, or creating new demand. Practically, this means creating a new market. And because supply can’t exist without demand (ie, it has to go somewhere), there’s nothing quite as demanding as the market. So where do you find a new market in a fully functioning economy? Well, about 30-35 years ago, someone noticed that bright pink cash cow all the social conservatives had been politely ignoring, and decided to sell them their rights, wrapped up in some pretty consumerist wrapping paper, with sparkles, and gay rights have been rolling forward ever since.
So really, business needs gay marriage, because all the other gay markets have been established, and there’s still lots of excess supply going round. Which is why I think the neo-cons aren’t really good economists, because classical economic theory says that if there is a market for it, well supply must meet demand, and there’s a market for gay marriage as there is both supply and demand for it.
I could really go on and on, about how the whole system works, and how it’ll eventually get there for most people. The reason capitalism is so strong is that it works. But it takes no account of immediate human suffering. Supply and demand will always move to meet each other under capitalism, but this is a process of weeks, months, years, and centuries, and it grinds people down. And it’s really giving all power to the market, and do we really want that? Because at the end of it all we still have human agency, the capacity to say no (which is why some markets fail), and I’d rather power stay in the hands of people.