Tyler Cowen

You hear people say, "Oh, in the old Soviet Union or Czechoslovakia, intellectuals and artists were so important." Often they were. People would sort of hang onto the next work from a critic or a poet. But when you have a freer, wealthier, more stable society, they're not important in the same way. You know, maybe something is lost there, but in net terms I have no doubt it's for the better.

There's another reason why intellectuals are so often hostile to markets. At least part of it is because markets do not reward quality per se, and that is resented. In a cultural context, if you look at how rewards are distributed, they're not linked directly to quality, no matter how you care to define it. You look out in the market and see that Michael Jackson, who maybe is not the best father, earned however many millions from his music. Or that Madonna, who's not the best singer, earned so much more than a great opera singer. We instinctively feel there's something wrong with that. Maybe there is something wrong with that at some moral level, but the more important question is whether the system as a whole delivers the cultural goods. Does a system that allows a bad singer to earn more than a good singer get you more singing of many different kinds? The answer is yes.