Washington and Lee Law Review

Volume 45 Issue 4 Article 3

Fall 9-1-1988

Deregulation, Reregulation, and the Myth of the Market

Edward L. Rubin

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Edward L. Rubin, Deregulation, Reregulation, and the Myth of the Market, 45 Wash. & Lee L. Rev.
1249 (1988).
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 DEREGULATION, REREGULATION, AND THE MYTH
OF THE MARKET

EDWARD L. RuBIN*
The last two decades have taught us a new word-deregulation-and
the question of this symposium is whether the coming years are about to
teach us yet another one-reregulation. To answer this question, however,
it is necessary to determine what we mean by these two evocative but
uncertain terms. The first, which is by now familiar, describes a social
movement and a social theory, but it also characterizes the things that it
describes. Like all characterizations, it rests upon a vision of the world, a
vision that is rarely made explicit by the movement it indentifies. This vision
involves strong claims about social organization, individual behavior, and
political action. Whether there is a countervailing movement or a counter-
vailing theory remains to be determined. But by using the term "reregula-
tion" to describe that possibility, we clearly participate in the established
vision of its predecessor. That is not necessarily fatal to the enterprise, of
course; our culture is filled with important contributions by nonconformists,
nonbelievers, anti-Federalists, antislavery advocates, deconstructionists, der-
egulators themselves, and many others who have defined themselves by
what they have opposed. The important point is to discern the vision that
lies behind terms like deregulation or reregulation, to trace its contours,
and to bring its implicit assertions to light.
This Article pursues that inquiry, using the financial services industry
as an example. Part I discusses recent events in the financial services
industry, organizing these events in accordance with our common under-
standing of the terms deregulation and reregulation. It turns out that there
are many events that fall within each category, and that the two groups
cannot be ordered in any neat, temporal succession. One way to interpret
this somewhat ragged pattern would be to look at the events in greater
detail, while retaining the same set of categories. The approach that this
Article adopts, however, is to examine the implications of the categories
themselves. Part II does so, demonstrating that the terms deregulation and
reregulation imply a particular vision of social organization, human behav-
ior, and the polity. In addition, Part II examines the relationship between
this vision and the discipline of economics, since economics has been the
major source of our current theories about regulation. Part III then criticizes
the vision that underlies deregulatory-reregulatory discourse as being based
on assumptions that lack empirical support. This vision, Part III argues,

* Professor of Law, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley.

B.A. 1969, Princeton University; J.D. 1979, Yale University. I would like to thank my research
assistant, Jeremy Elkins, for his assistance and advice with this Article.

1249
1250 WASHINGTON AND LEE LA W REVIEW [Vol. 45:1249

may not be demonstrably wrong, but it is not demonstrably correct. Rather,

it is one way of looking at, or interpreting, a certain group of events, and
must be evaluated according to its usefulness as an interpretation. Part IV
then suggests a process of evaluation that would encompass a variety of
alternative visions, including the deregulatory one. It concludes by exploring
the relationship of this process to economics. The observation is that
alternative visions do not necessarily reject economics, and may actually
expand its applications, although these alternatives deny economics the
definitive effect on policy that is implicit in the deregulatory model.

I. RECENT EVENTS IN THE FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY

A. Deregulation
Apart from the transportation industry, the financial services industry
probably constitutes the clearest example of the process which we call
deregulation. In financial services, this process has proceeded on three
fronts: the elimination of interest rate restrictions, the reduction of geo-
graphic barriers to interstate banking, and the more gradual reduction of
the separation between banking and other businesses. Since H. Helmut
Loring and James M. Brundy have thoroughly described the process in a
prior issue of this review,1 the present discussion is restricted to broad
outlines.
In 1933 Congress prohibited interest payments on demand deposits and
authorized the Federal Reserve Board to limit interest payments on time
deposits. 2 Sustained increases in interest rates during the 1970s led to a
determined search for financial instruments and legal stratagems to circum-
vent these limitations. The NOW (negotiated order of withdrawal) account,
essentially a demand deposit account operating under an alias,3 and the
money market account, a similarly disguised savings account offered by an
investment or securities company 4 were the products of these efforts.
Congress could have shored up the existing restrictions by proscribing both
devices, but it would have risked the fury of its inflation-sensitized constit-
uency. Instead, it hesitantly began authorizing NOW accounts within defined
geographic areas.5 In 1980, as part of the Depositary Institutions Deregu-

1. Loring & Brundy, The Deregulation of Banks, 42 WAsH. & LEE L. REv. 347 (1985).
2. Banking Act of 1933, Pub. L. No. 73-66, 48 Stat. 162 (1933) (codified at 12 U.S.C.
§ 371 (1982) (superseded)).
3. On the evolution of NOW accounts, see Riordan, Negotiable Orders of Withdrawal,
30 Bus. LAW. 151 (1974); Note, Negotiable Order of Withdrawal (NOW) Account: "Checking
Accounts" for Savings Banks?, 14 B.C. INDUS. & COM. L.R. 471 (1973).
4. On money market accounts generally, see K. COOPER & D. FRASER, BANKiNG
DEREGULATION AND THE NEw COMPETrrION IN FiNANcIAL SERVICEs 5-7 (1984); R. LrrAN, WHAT
SHOULD BANKS Do? 33-35 (1987).
5. Act of Aug. 16, 1973, Pub. L. No. 93-100, § 2, 87 Stat. 342 (1973) (authorizing
NOW accounts in Massachusetts and New Hampshire); State Taxation of Depositories Act,
19881 MYTH OF THE MARKET 1251

lation and Monetary Control Act ("DIDMCA"), 6 Congress abolished the

restriction on demand deposits and provided for phased-in elimination of
the restriction on time deposits. When this proved insufficient to halt the
growth of nonbank money market funds, it followed with the Garn-St.
Germain Act, 7 which permitted banks to offer money market accounts on
essentially the same terms as their competitors. With that, the elimination
of interest rate restrictions was essentially complete.
The reduction of the barriers to interstate banking has been initiated
by a different and more unexpected actor-the state legislatures. Geographic
barriers to interstate banking were maintained by two well-known federal
laws, the McFadden Act, which applies to interstate branching by national
banks," and the Douglas Amendment, which applies to the interstate activ-
ities of bank holding companies. 9 Neither of these Acts prohibits interstate
banking; they merely empower the states to prohibit it if they so choose.
For a long time, virtually every state made use of this power, the small
states to protect their banking industry from larger neighbors, the larger
states to protect their banking industry from New York. As funding diffi-
culties grew in the 1980s and credit began to run short, it finally dawned
upon state legislators that they might be protecting their state banks at the
expense of all their other industries. Maine and Alaska were the first to
abandon their dreams of becoming worldwide financial centers, and to invite
banks headquartered in other states to do business within their borders.' 0
During the next few years, the great majority of states followed the same
path." Texas, still nourishing itself on the myth that it is an independent

Pub. L. No. 94-222, § 9, 90 Stat. 197 (1976) (extending authorization to Connecticut, Maine,
Rhode Island and Vermont); Financial Institutions Regulatory and Interest Rate Control Act
of 1978, Pub. L. No. 95-630, § 1301, 92 Stat. 3712 (1978) (codified at 12 U.S.C. § 1832)
(extending authorization to New York); Act of Dec. 28, 1979, Pub. L. No. 96-161, § 106, 93
Stat. 1235 (1979) (codified at 12 U.S.C. § 1832 (1982)) (extending authorization to New Jersey).
6. Pub. L. No. 96-221, 94 Stat. 132 (1980) (codified as amended at 12 U.S.C. §§3501-
24 (1982)). For the provision in question, see id., tit. III, § 302(a) (codified at 12 U.S.C. §
371a (1982)). See generally T. CARGoIL & G. GAgcrA, FinACIAL DEREGULATION AND MONETARY
CONTROL (1982); K. COOPER & D. FRASER, supra note 4, at 105-25.
7. Pub. L. No. 97-320, 96 Stat. 1469 (1982); see id. § 326, 96 Stat. at 1500-1501
(codified at 12 U.S.C. § 3503(c) (1982)). Current rules on deposit account interest appear at
12 C.F.R. §§ 217, 329. On Garn-St. Germain generally, see K. COOPER & D. FRASER, supra
note 4, at 126-42; D. FRASER & J. KOLARi, THE FUTURE OF SMALL BANKS IN A DEREGULATED
ENVIRON AENT 53-67 (1985).
8. McFadden Act, ch. 191, 12 U.S.C. §§ 36, 81 (1982).
9. Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, ch. 240, 12 U.S.C. §§ 1841-185 (1982). Section
1842(d)(1) is the Douglas Amendment, so named after its sponsor, Senator Paul Douglas of
Illinois.
10. ALASKA STAT. § 06.05.235 (Supp. 1984); ME. REv. STAT. ANN. tit. 9-B, § 1013
(Supp. 1984). At approximately the same time, Delaware and South Dakota authorized certain
banking activities by out-of-state banks, but these statutes were designed to attract new jobs
without removing the protection for existing state banks. See DEL. CODE ANN. tit. 5, §§ 801-
826 (1974); S.D. CODIFIED LAWS ANN. §§ 51-16-40, -41 (1984).
11. See Frieder, The Interstate Banking Landscape: Legislative Policies and Rationale, 6
1252 WASHINGTON AND LEE LA W REVIEW [Vol. 45:1249

country, suddenly found that the drop in oil prices was fast reducing it to
the reality of lesser developed country and unexpectedly joined the general
trend.' 2 This state legislation, combined with Garn-St. Germain's reluctant
authorization that out-of-state institutions can purchase failing thrifts, has
virtually eliminated the legal barriers to interstate banking.
Elimination of the regulatory barriers that separate banking from other
financial activities such as securities dealing, brokerage, investment services,
insurance, and from commerce generally, has proceeded the most gradually
of these three forms of deregulation, although, or perhaps because, the
largest number of actors have participated in the process. Some state
legislatures have authorized their state-chartered banks to engage in previ-
ously prohibited activities.1 3 The federal regulators have done the same with
the national banks and bank holding companies, enthusiastically in the case
of the ever congenial Comptroller of the Currency, reluctantly in the case
of the dragon-like Federal Reserve.14
The precincts that have been most frequently violated by the federally-
authorized incursions are those of the securities industry. Almost every time
these incursions occur, the Securities Industry Association or the Investment
Company Institute has sued the relevant regulator with the result that the
federal courts have been drawn into the deregulatory fray. As it turns out,
these courts, and particularly the United States Supreme Court, have the
clearest policy of any federal actor; making use of deference to federal
agencies, hard looks at federal agencies, strict construction, loose construc-
tion, original interest, and evolutionary meaning, the federal courts have
5
consistently ruled in favor of deregulation, usually by a unanimous vote.

CONTEMP. POL. IssuEs 41 (1988). According to Frieder's survey, 42 states (including the District
of Columbia) have enacted some form of interstate banking law. Of these, 16 are fully national,
while the remaining 26 are regional (but, in 11 cases, have provisions for conversion to a
national authorization). The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of regional banking
laws in Northeast Bancorp, Inc. v. Board of Governors, 472 U.S. 159 (1985). See Miller,
Interstate Banking and the Court, 1985 Sup. CT. REv. 179.
12. TEx. STAT. ANN. art. 343-916 (Vernon Supp. 1988).
13. See, e.g., CAL. FIN. CODE §§ 751-753, 772, 1338 (West Supp. 1985) (allowing banks
to underwrite mutual funds, participate in real estate development, and underwrite securities);
id. at § 6702 (allowing unlimited investment by savings and loan institutions in nonmortgage
assets); S.D. CODIEMD LAWS ANN. § 51-18-1.3 (Supp. 1988) (allowing banks to sell and
underwrite insurance outside South Dakota); TEx. STAT. ANN. art. 342-114 (Vernon Supp.
1985) (allowing unlimited investment by savings and loan institutions in nonmortgage assets).
14. See, e.g., ICI v. Conover, 596 F. Supp. 1496, 1499-50 (D.D.C. 1984) (describing
comptroller's ruling on individual retirement accounts), aff'd, 790 F.2d 925 (D.C. Cir.), cert.
denied, 107 S. Ct. 421 (1986). Decision of the Comptroller of the Currency in In re American
National Bank of Austin (Sept. 2, 1983) (authorizing national banks to engage in full service
brokerage); Bankers Trust New York Corporation, 73 Fed. Res. Bull. 138 (1987) (authorizing
bank holding company to deal in commercial paper, subject to restrictions); Citicorp, 70 Fed.
Res. Bull. 149 (1984) (authorizing bank holding company to acquire savings and loan, subject
to restrictions).
15. See, e.g., Clarke v. SIA, 107 S. Ct. 750 (1987) (unanimous result) (permitting bank
holding company to open discount brokerage offices interstate); SIA v. Board of Governors,
19881 MYTH OF THE MARKET 1253

Congress has been much less clear in its direction. A full account of
its august peregrinations on bank product expansion would fill this entire
volume. For at least ten years preceding 1987, everyone but Congress agreed
that Congress should act, but no one agreed what Congress should do, and
so Congress did nothing. Finally, it responded to a sense that the entire
financial system was unravelling beyond all possible repair, and slapped a
one-year, across-the-board moratorium on all federal deregulatory action.
This Act of Desperation was known, somewhat risibly, as the Competitive
Equality Banking Act of 1987.16 In the year that followed, however, the
hoped-for enlightenment did not descend upon Congress; although major
bills were introduced, the moratorium nonetheless expired without new
legislation. The federal regulators were now required to address themselves
to the mountain of applications that had accumulated on desks during the
period of the moratorium. The federal regulators were back where they
started. Even before the moratorium ended, the Securities Industry Asso-
ciation had filed suit once more, based on what the regulators said they
planned to do. 17 With the situation unravelling once more, Congress seemed
to lapse into a state of political shock, and, to date, has failed to act on
any of the legislative proposals that have been presented to it.

B. Reregulation
These events seem to reveal a clear, although somewhat spasmodic trend
toward the repeal of regulatory rules-that is, a pattern of deregulation in
the financial services industry. In fact, if one defines regulation in terms of
the market structure provisions enacted between 1933 and 1970 involving
interest rates, geographic boundaries, and product lines, the pattern is
difficult to deny. But in the late 1960s, the financial services industry became
subject to a new type of regulation. Congress, and to some extent the states,
began enacting laws to protect ordinary consumers from the rigors of the

468 U.S. 207 (1984) (unanimous decision) (authorizing bank holding company to operate
discount brokerage service); Board of Governors v. ICI, 450 U.S. 46 (1981) (unanimous
decision) (authorizing bank holding company to provide investment advisory services); SIA v.
Board of Governors, 807 F.2d 1052 (D.C. Cir. 1986) (unanimous decision) (upholding Federal
Reserve Board authorization of bank holding company's sale of commercial paper), cert.
denied, 107 S. Ct. 3228 (1987); ICI v. Conover, 790 F.2d 925 (D.C. Cir.) (authorizing national
bank to market trust for assets of individual retirement accounts), cert. denied, 107 S. Ct. 421
(1986) (unanimous decision); cf. Board of Governors v. Dimension Fin. Corp., 474 U.S. 361
(1986) (unanimous decision) (overturning Federal Reserve order closing nonbank bank loop-
hold); Lewis v. BT Inv. Managers, Inc., 447 U.S. 27 (1980) (unanimous decision) (declaring
unconstitutional Florida statute forbidding out-of-state bank ownership of investment advisory
service). For the Supreme Court's attitude toward Glass-Steagall, see Langevoort, Statutory
Obsolescence and the JudicialProcess: The Revisionist Role of the Courts in FederalBanking
Regulation, 85 MICH. L. Rv. 672 (1987).
16. Pub. L. No. 100-86, 101 Stat. 489 (1987) (codified as amended at 31 U.S.C. § 3328
(1988)).
17. Securities Indus. Ass'n v. Board of Governors, 847 F.2d 890 (D.C. Cir. 1988);
Securities Indus. Ass'n v. Board of Governors, 839 F.2d 37 (2d Cir. 1988).
1254 WASHINGTON AND LEE LA W REVIEW [Vol. 45:1249

credit and investment markets. The first of these enactments was the Truth-
in-Lending Act of 1968,18 which preceded the start of the deregulatory era
by several years. But the bulk of this legislation came during the same
period as the deregulatory actions just described, and seems to be an equally
important trend moving in the opposite direction.
It is true that the Truth-in-Lending Act was modified in 1980, as part
9
of the DIDMCA, and that these modifications, called Truth-in-Lending
Simplification, were regarded as part of the deregulation movement. But
this legislation is properly described as corrective, not deregulatory. The
original Truth-in-Lending Act was something of a botch; with the addition
of the Federal Reserve Board's implementing regulations, 0 it proved so
complex that creditors were simply unable to comply with it. As a result,
many consumers who had complaints about the product that they acquired
with their loan, or who were simply unable to meet their loan payments,
could avoid their obligations by charging the creditor with Truth-in-Lending
violations. 21 This interesting, if rather rough form of consumer redress was
clearly beyond the intent of the Truth-in-Lending Act's proponents, and
correcting it hardly represented a retreat from the basic protectionist idea.
Even at the flood tide of the deregulation movement, Congress did not
abandon Truth-in-Lending's central requirement that creditors disclose their
terms. In fact, while in making the Truth-in-Lending Act possible to comply
22
with, Congress actually strengthened some of its provisions.
Apart from the vicissitudes of Truth-in-Lending, a steady stream of
consumer protection regulation has been enacted during the last two decades.
The 1970 amendments to Truth-in-Lending regulated the payment aspect of
credit cards, allocating the bulk of fraud losses to the issuing bank.23 The
Fair Credit Billing Act of 1974 required creditors to provide regular account
statements and to correct or explain those charges that the customer chal-
lenged.Y4 The Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970 imposed a number of
substantive restrictions on credit rating agencies, 25 and the Fair Debt Col-

18. Pub. L. No. 90-321, tit. I, 82 Stat. 146 (1968) (codified as amended in 15 U.S.C.
§§ 1601-1613, 1631-1641 (1982)).
19. Truth-in-Lending Simplification and Reform Act, Pub. L. No. 96-221, tit. VI, 94
Stat. 168-85 (1980) (codified at 15 U.S.C. §§ 1601-1646 (1982)).
20. Regulation Z, 12 C.F.R. § 226 (1988).
21. See Pettit, Representing Consumer Defendants in Debt Collection Actions: The
Disclosure Defense Game, 59 Tax. L. Rav. 255, 256-66 (1981); see also Landers & Rohner,
A Functional Analysis of Truth in Lending, 26 UCLA L. REv. 711 (1979); Whitford, The
Function of Disclosure Regulation in Consumer Transactions, 1973 Wis. L. Rv. 400.
22. For example, a new provision, 15 U.S.C. § 1646, authorized the Federal Reserve
Board to "collect, publish, and disseminate to the public ... the annual percentage rates
charged for representative types of non-sale credit." See generally Pettit, supra note 21;
Rohner, Truth in Lending "Simplified": Simplified?, 56 N.Y.U. L. Rav. 999 (1981).
23. Amendments to Truth in Lending Act, Pub. L. No. 91-508, tit. V, § 502(a), 84 Stat.
1126 (1970) (codified as amended at 15 U.S.C. §§ 1642-1645 (1982)).
24. Fair Credit Billing Act, Pub. L. No. 93-495, tit. III, § 306, 88 Stat. 1511 (1974)
(codified at 15 U.S.C. §§ 1666-1666j (1982)).
25. Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970, Pub. L. No. 91-508, tit. VI, § 607, 84 Stat. 1128
(1970) (codified at 15 U.S.C. §§ 1681-1681t (1982)).
19881 MYTH OF THE MARKET 1255

26
lection Practices Act of 1977 did the same for collection agents.
In the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, Congress prohibited the
denial of credit on the basis of sex, race, or national origin. 27 It thus took
the first step toward securing consumers' access to credit, rather than simply
protecting consumers from abuse. This was followed in 1977 by the Com-
munity Reinvestment Act, which declared that banks had some sort of
obligation to provide credit to the communities from which they obtained
their deposits. 28 The precise nature of this obligation was left unclear, and
the absence of realistic sanctions left that unclear obligation unenforceable.
Nonetheless, there lay within this sloppy, toothless statute the possibility
that the supply of credit would be regulated to assist the survival of small
towns or the revival of blighted, urban neighborhoods.
All these statutes predate 1980, when Ronald Reagan, who explicitly
had committed himself to deregulation, was elected by a landslide. Within
a few years of his election, however, a new consumer protection initiative
developed, this time to regulate the check collection system. The basis of
this initiative was dissatisfaction with the bankers' practice of placing holds
on deposited checks, or even cash, so that customers could not draw up
their funds for several days or weeks. This was a long-standing practice,
and there was no evidence of a precipitating crisis. But the consumer
movement placed it at the top of its agenda; within a few years several
states had enacted funds availability laws, 29 and there was a clear majority
in both houses of Congress for federal legislation.30 The actual legislation
did not pass until 1987, largely because it was attached to more controversial
measures. 3 But when it did, it contained a surprise. Congress had not only
imposed severe restrictions on banks' funds availability practices, with
elaborate disclosure requirements, but it had authorized and encouraged the
Federal Reserve Board to regulate the entire check collection system. Fur-
thermore, it had done so without anyone's urging, and over the explicit 32
objections of the agency charged with implementing these regulations.

26. Fair Debt Collection Practices Act of 1977, Pub. L. No. 95-109, tit. VIII, §§ 803-
817, 91 Stat. 874 (1977) (codified at 15 U.S.C. §§ 1692-1692o (1982)).
27. Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, Pub. L. No. 94-239, §§ 3(a)-7, 90 Stat. 251
(1976) (codified at 15 U.S.C. §§ 1691b-1691f (1982)).
28. Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, Pub. L. No. 95-128, tit. VIII, §§ 802-806,
91 Stat. 1147 (1977) (codified at 12 U.S.C. §§ 2901-2905 (1982)).
29. See e.g., CAL. COM. CODE §§ 4212, 4213 (West Supp. 1983); CAL. FmN. CODE §§
865-867 (West Supp. 1988); FLA. STAT. ANN. § 655.081 (West 1984); N.Y. BANKING LAW §
14-d (McKinney Supp. 1988). See generally Cooper, Checks Held Hostage-CurrentLegislation
on Funds Availability, 103 BANKING L.J. 4, 4-15 (1986).
30. See 1986 Cong. Q. 2683 (support for funds availability legislation, and complexities
of enactment); Cooper, supra note 29, at 15-28 (summarizing content of congressional bills).
31. Expedited Funds Availability Act of 1987, Pub. L. No. 100-86, tit. VI, § 602-611,
101 Stat. 635 (1987) (codified at 12 U.S.C. §§ 4001-4010 (Supp. 1988)).
32. Id. § 4009(b), (c). For a discussion of the Act's Effects on the payment system, see
Cooter & Rubin, Orders and Incentives as Regulatory Methods: The Expedited Funds Avail-
ability Act of 1987, 35 UCLA L. REv. 301, 334-36 (1988).
1256 WASHINGTON AND LEE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 45:1249

This past term the growth of consumer protection regulation has con-
tinued apace. The Fair Credit and Charge Card Disclosure Act of 1988 was
enacted, adding to existing Truth-in-Lending requirements for credit card
debt. 33 The Senate passed a Home Equity Loan Act, requiring extensive
disclosures on loans secured by previously purchased real estate. 34 In addi-
tion, both houses passed a Truth-in-Savings Act, requiring the disclosure
of yield rates on investment accounts. The only reason final legislation did
not pass was that the Truth-in-Savings Act was included in the Senate's
controversial deregulation bill, 35 a bill also contains an effort to implant
some teeth into the Community Reinvestment Act.3 6 Consumer advocates
regard this latter effort as a quid pro quo for their support of bank product
expansion, and that support may well be necessary for the general bill to
pass.
Thus the pattern that emerges from the recent regulatory history of the
financial services industry is too complicated to be captured by a single
term. There certainly have been a number of events that can be properly
regarded as "deregulatory," but there are numerous others that appear to
move in the opposite direction. In general, the deregulatory efforts involve
elimination of the restrictions upon market structure, those restrictions
designed to distinguish demand deposits from savings accounts, to separate
one state's banks from another's, and to separate banks in general from
other kinds of institutions.3 7 By contrast, new regulations have been imposed
to protect consumers from oppressive practices, to inform them of contrac-
tual terms, and to ensure them a supply of credit. The question is whether
these events can be fit within a single framework of analysis-whether the
second set of events are usefully regarded as reversing the same process
that the first set has initiated.

II. Ti DEREGULATORY VISION

Our efforts to make sense of recent events in the financial services

industry are strongly affected by the vision that is embedded in the terms

33. P.L. No. 100-464, 102 Stat. 2271 (1988).

34. S. 1886, 100th Cong. 2d Sess., tit. VII (1988); see 134 CONG. Rac. S. 3437 (daily
ed. March 30, 1988) (record of passage); id. at S. 3520, 3538-40 (daily ed. March 31, 1988)
(text of provision enacted as Title VII of Proxmire Financial Modernization Act of 1988). The
vote was 94 in favor, 2 opposed, 4 not voting. Id. at 3437.
35. S. 1886, 100th Cong. 2d Sess. tit. VI (1988); see 234 CONG. REc. S. 3437 (daily ed.
March 31, 1988) (record of passage); id. at S. 3520, 3536-38 (daily ed. March 31, 1988) (text
of provision enacted as Title VI of Proxmire Financial Modernization Act of 1988).
36. S. 1886, 100th Cong. 2d Sess., § 914, 34 CONG. Rac. S. 3543 (daily ed. March 31,
1988) (requiring Federal Reserve Board approval under Community Reinvestment Act, for
bank holding company applications to engage in nonbanking, as well as banking activities).
37. There are, however, further complexities in the pattern. For example, recent efforts
to tighten capital requirements can be seen as increased regulation of structural requirements.
See International Lending Supervision Act of 1983, 12 U.S.C. §§ 3901-3912 (1982 & Supp. IV
1986); 12 C.F.R. § 325.3 -.4 (1988) (FDIC); 12 C.F.R. §§ 208, 225, 263 (1988) (Federal Reserve
Board); 12 C.F.R. §§ 3.5-.21 (1988) (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency).
1988] MYTH OF THE MARKET 1257

deregulation and reregulation. This vision is not really contained in the

words themselves, of course, but it is implicit in the way these words are
used within our social context. It strongly affects, and perhaps controls, its
proponents' image of society, of individual behavior, and of the political
system. Economic analysis is regularly linked with this vision, lending it a
distinctive, and apparently empirical character. As a result, discussions of
deregulation tend to focus on the role of economic analysis, and on its
validity as social science. The effort here, however, is to explore the vision
itself; while this vision often determines the way economics is used in law
and public policy, it is not derived from economic analysis and it is certainly
not equivalent to such analysis.
A. Society
One element of the vision that the terms deregulation and reregulation
imply is that there exists a natural form of social organization where
regulation has not been imposed. This is, of course, the "free market,"
where willing buyers and willing sellers exchange goods, services, and money
according to mutual agreements." The free market is often treated as a
natural implication of two other premises: that individuals are motivated
by self-interest, and that the polity society is not a collective entity, with a
general will, but a collection or alliance of these individuals. In other words,
given these kinds of individuals, and this kind of society, it is argued that
a market naturally follows as the best form of social organization. But the
free market is, in fact, a preempirical and pretheoretical image that underlies
these premises about individuals and the polity. It is the master premise,
an independent, unarticulated concept of a good society that silently controls
the views of its proponents about both individuals and political organiza-
tions.
To begin with, the free market image controls its proponents' views
about the proper role of the state, and the proper scope of regulation. The
role of the state, according to the free market view, is to enforce agreements
between individuals according to their terms and-just as importantly, but
generally less often mentioned-to create and control the money that is
used for payment. Any other governmental involvement is an offense against
the purity of the market. "Deregulation," as we use the term, refers to the
removal of such involvement, a restoration of the market to its natural
state. "Reregulation" refers to the reintroduction of those rude intrusions,
and thus carries with it a vague air of backsliding or loss of nerve.
This does not mean that regulation always is regarded as a mistake.
But implicit in this market vision is the idea that regulation is an unnatural

38. Proponents of deregulation who make this assumption, with varying degrees of
explicitness, include S. BREYER, REGULATION AND ITS REFORM (1982); B. MITNICK, Tnm
POuTCAL ECONOMY OF REGULATION: CREATING, DFsIGNiNG ANr REMOViNG REGULATORY FORs
(1980); A. SToNE, 10-13, 35-60 (1982); F. THOMPSON & L.
REGULATION AND ITS ALTERNATIvES
JONES, REGULATORY POLICY AND PRACTICES: REGULATING BErrER AND REGULATING LEss 8-43
(1982); L. WHITE, REFORMING REGULATION: PROCESSES AND PROBLEmS (1981).
1258 WASHINGTON AND LEE LA W REVIEW [Vol. 45:1249

act that should only be undertaken for a specified and carefully articulated
reason. The free market, in other words, is a presumption, a preferred
approach, while regulation must bear the burden of justification. What
justifies regulation, according to this view, is market failure, that is, the
failure of the market to achieve efficiency. 39 The purpose of that regulation
must be restoration of the market to its natural condition, or to as close
an approximation of that condition as can be hoped for in these fallen
circumstances. Typically, this involves elimination of monopoly, adjustment
for externalities, or correction of serious information asymmetries. 40 The
characterization of these phenomena as market failures, and the prescriptions
for their resolution, are based upon the vision of the market as a natural
state of social organization.
Economics is linked to this free market vision for at least two reasons.
In its classic form, economic analysis demonstrates that a free market will
maximize wealth, 41 while a regulated market, one in which the government
4
intervenes for reasons other than the correction of market failure, will not. z
Traditionally, many regulations were justified in terms of their ability to
produce wealth, but the analysis indicates that they will not do so as
effectively as the abandonment of regulation. Economic analysis thus served
as an engine of the Enlightenment, which demanded that all social rules
that could not be justified in terms of real world effects be cleared away. 43
More recently, mathematical economics has demonstrated that a free
market can be modeled, and has produced .the first social science theory
that possesses the ardently desired qualities of prediction and precision that
we associate with natural science. 44 Regulation prevents the model's opera-
tion. An effort has been made to bring regulatory action within the model,
by means of public choice theory, but the result, however interesting, is
not quite satisfactory. While public choice may explain certain political
behaviors by treating them as market phenomena, it cannot prevent those
behaviors from altering the market for goods, services, and money in a
manner that disables the mathematical theory. Thus, traditional economics
demonstrates that a free market serves the widely accepted social purpose

39. See K. MEIR, REoULATION: PoLITIcs, BuREAucRAcY AND EcoNoMics (1985); B.

MITNICK, supra note 37, at 2; R. LrrAN & W. NoRDnAus, REFORMING FEDERAL REGULATION
36 (1983) (stating "traditional view").
40. See S. BREYER, supra note 37, at 15-28; A. STONE, supra note 37, at 61-166; F.
THOMPSON & L. JoNEs, supra note 37, at 44-92.
41. Myrdal, Implicit Values in Economics, in TEm PmLosoIsHy OF EcoNohncs 252
(Hausman ed. 1984). The wealth maximizing nature of perfectly competitive markets is often
described in terms of "social optimality" or "pareto efficiency." Id.; see R. CoomR & T.
ULEN, LAW AND ECONOMICS 44-45 (1988).
42. See supra note 37 (citing proponents of deregulation).
43. R. ANCHOR, THE ENLIGHTENMENT TRADITION 7 (1967); I. SCHNEIDER, THE ENLIGHT-
ENMENT 19-21 (1965).
44. For a critique of economists' claims to predictive accuracy, see D. MCCLOSKEY, THE
RHETORIC OF EcoNoMIcs 15-16 (1985).
1988] MYTH OF THE MARKET 1259

of wealth maximization, and modern economic models are then constructed

upon the existence of that market.

B. Individuals

A second element of the deregulatory vision, and an implication of its

major element of a naturally-occurring market, is that individuals must
behave in a particular manner. This behavior can be termed autonomous
self-interest-that individuals are primarily motivated by the desire to max-
imize their material condition. In order to produce a market, the desires
involved must preexist culture, 4" and must be material in character.4 If
culture can determine the self-interest that people perceive, the only assertion
being made is that people interact with their culture by internalizing cultural
norms. Self-interest would then be a method of social control, not an
independent human behavior that is controlled by means of regulation. As
such, it would be malleable by social systems; individuals could believe that
anything, including behaviors diametrically opposed to wealth maximization,
constituted their personal self-interest. Similarly, the market image requires
that self-interest focus on the kinds of rewards that a market, that is, the
exchange of goods and services, can provide. If self-interest can be non-
material, for example, if altruistic behavior is self-interested because it
satisfies one's personal interest in benefiting others, the entire concept
collapses into the empty observation that people want to act in accordance
with their own desires. 47 The underlying image of deregulation is much more
definitive; it suggests that there exists an independent set of desires that
market exchanges satisfy-the desire to maximize an autonomously created
and materially defined self-interest.
This theory of behavior is regarded as a real universal, true in all
cultures and in all ordinary circumstances. Left undisturbed, the argument
goes, it will dominate material interactions between individuals; suppressed,
it will assert itself in black markets, corruption, insincere exceptions, and
official circumventions. Regulation, as a form of such suppression, is
unnatural according to this vision because it interferes with basic human
nature, as well as with the market. Regulation can be justified where the
market fails, but in other cases it should be avoided.

45. See Boulding, The Basis of Value Judgments in Economics, in HUMAN VALuEs AND
ECONOMIC PoLIcY 71-2 (Hook ed. 1967); Nagel, Preference, Evaluation, and Reflective Choice,
in HUMAN VALuEs AN ECONOMIC POLICY 77 (Hook ed. 1967) (taking preferences as precultural
is unrealistic, but useful assumption).
46. See, e.g., S. KELMAN, WHAT PIcE INCENTIVES: EcoNoMIsTs AND T=E ENVIRONMENT
20-21 (1981). "Material" in this context does not mean "tangible." "Material interests"
include interests in, at least, goods and services. In fact, defining what counts as a material
good is somewhat difficult. The general idea is that a material desire relates to the material,
as opposed to the spiritual conditions, of one's own life. Id.
47. See Sen, Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic
Theory, 7 Pmes.. & PuB. Arr. 317 (1978).
1260 WASHINGTON AND LEE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 45:1249

The precise relationship between an asserted human universal like self-

interest and a normative argument, like the presumption against regulation,
is complex. To simplify, there are at least two significant connections. First,
a social policy that runs counter to natural human instincts is likely to be
ineffective, or to require so much force to effectuate that the policy would
be unacceptable on independent grounds. Second, real universals carry with
them an implicit normative appeal, stemming from our general respect for
human nature. Many normative systems are based upon such claims. There
is no logical argument that such universals imply normative arguments, but
the normative arguments seem quite persuasive if one accepts the universal.
Again, economic analysis has close connections with the concept of
human nature that underlies our deregulatory discourse. Economics tells us
how individual welfare can be maximized, and thus is closely linked to a
motivation structure based on rational self-interest. Of course, no serious
economist would deny that even the most rational, egoistic individuals have
other desires besides their own welfare. Economic theory, however, applies
most directly and usefully to material welfare; the more central material
welfare is to peoples' motivation structure, therefore, the more important
economic analysis becomes. Moreover, mathematical economics depends
upon rational, self-interested behavior. At present, economics cannot model
the actions of the altruistic or the self-destructive,4 and it encounters serious
difficulties with even garden-variety irrationality.
B. Politics
The deregulatory vision of a naturally-occurring market, and of self-
interested individuals leads, in turn, to a theory of politics. Since human
beings are autonomous individuals, with preexisting preferences, conflicting
desires, and self-interested motivations; society is thus an uneasy alliance
among natural antagonists. For over three hundred years, we have concep-
tualized this alliance as a type of contract, whereby these autonomous
individuals exchanged part of their independence for advantages that could
be secured only by collective action. 49 Thus, individuals are viewed as
anterior to society, and the political system they have created is to be
judged by the extent to which it satisfies or frustrates their preexisting
desires.
A common assumption is that the virtues of the market, and thus the
vices of regulation, can be derived from this theory of individuals and of

48. H. KATOUZiAN, IDEOLOGY AND METHOD IN ECONOMICS (1980); see also J. ELSTER,
ULYSSES AND THE SIRENS: STUDImS IN RATIONALITY AND IRRATIONALITY 141-6 (1979).
49. The basic texts, which are almost too familiar to require citation are T. HOBBES,
LEVIATHAN (F. McNeilly rev. ed. 1968); J. LOCKE, THE SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT (J.
Gough rev. ed. 1946). Significantly, Part I of Hobbes' book is entitled "Of Man," and Part
II is "Of Commonwealth." Similarly Locke begins with the state of nature (ch. II), and
reaches "Civil Society" only in Chapters VII and VIII. For modern political theories built on
contract doctrine, see J. BUCHANAN & G. TULLOCK, THE CALCULUS OF CONSENT (1962); J.
RAwLs, A THEORY OF JUSTICE (1971).
19881 MYTH OF THE MARKET 1261

politics. In fact, the reverse is true; the vision of politics rests on the belief
in the market as a natural form of social organization, as well as on a
belief in autonomous, self-interested individuals. Society gets started, after
all, when individuals who exist without society join together in a contractual
agreement. But how did these individuals know what a contract was, and
how to go about negotiating one, particularly a complex one like The Social
Contract? ° The only answer is that contractual behavior comes naturally
to human beings, or that these human beings, even in their feral state, were
living in a natural market of some sort. Of course, proponents of the
contract theory regard it as a conceptual construct for analyzing political
morality, not as an actual account of social history. But social contract
theory presents the same basic difficulty on the conceptual level as it does
on the historical one. Contracts must be formed according to a set of rules,
and are deemed enforceable and binding on the parties only because of the
rules' continuing vitality. Even acknowledging the social contract to be a
theoretical construct, where do the rules that govern the social contract
come from? Presumably, they are part of some conceptual ground state,
some natural morality that is regarded as preexisting the society that has
been created in accordance with the rules.
There is a second reason why this vision of the political system as a
means of satisfying individual desires depends upon the vision of a naturally-
occurring market. In essence, the idea that the purpose of politics, or of
society in general, is to satisfy the conscious choices of individuals is a
market image. Even the liberal tradition does not limit society's role to this
market image; rather, it embraces other views that recognize an educative
or emancipatory role for social life. The belief in the superiority of the
market also involves strong assumptions about which preferences should be
satisfied. Members of a society may have individual preferences that can
be satisfied through a market, but they also have social preferences that
can be satisfied through collective, governmental action, including market
regulation. The only apparent reason to favor one set of these preferences
over another is that the market preferences are regarded as natural ones,
and thus more real than other preferences. Of course, the market is capable
of registering the intensity, as well as the existence of people's preferences,
but so is a pluralist democracy.
The same set of attitudes underlie the deregulatory approach to ordinary
politics, as well as to political theory. The market image, once more, is
that human beings are naturally motivated by autonomous self-interest.s

50. See T. GREEN, LECTURES ON THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION 66 (P. Harris
& J. Morrow ed. 1986); C. MACPHERSON, THE POLITICAL THEORY OF PossEssVE INDIVIDUALISM:
HOBBES TO LOCKE (1962). This same criticism has been advanced in slightly different form
with regard to Rawls' theory. See Nagel, Rawls on Justice, in READING RAWLS 5 (N. Daniel
ed. 1975). For the idea that the nature of the social contract will depend on the way in which
the choice situation is defined, see B. ACKERMAN, SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE LIBERAL STATE
337-42 (1980).
1262 WASHINGTON AND LEE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 45:1249

When this image is extended to public officials, as well as to market

participants, it suggests that legislators generally try to maximize their chance
of reelection, while bureaucrats try to maximize their power, or minimize
the threat to their existing power. Citizens will organize to obtain favorable
treatment from these self-interested officials, but only to the extent that the
advantages to be obtained exceed the cost of organizing. As a result, special
interest groups, where the individual members' stakes are high and their
numbers are relatively low, will organize effectively, while the general public,
whose stakes in any given issue are low and whose numbers are high, will
not.5 2 Legislators, in their effort to be reelected, consequently will respond
to special interests rather than the interests of the general public. This view
of politics, which generally is called public choice, is directly derived from
the view that the market is the natural form of social organization. In
effect, it postulates that political life is really a market for reelection, or
agency funding, rather than a collective effort to govern.
The concept of deregulation rests heavily upon this vision of political
actors. Because political action meets the needs of special interest groups
and public officials, but not the needs of citizens in general, the effects of
political action are undesirable from the perspective of any theory that
favors individuals. Intrusions in the market are political action, of course,
and are thus undesirable from this perspective.- 3 But if the market is the
ground condition, the presumption in the absence of market failure, efforts
to create or preserve the market are not positive political actions. As a
result, these efforts do not spring from the venal motivations that inspire
54
regulation.
To describe a political program as deregulatory is to characterize it as
the undoing of positive actions, rather than as a positive action in itself.
This program thus becomes associated with the innocence of nonintrusion.
In restoring social organization to its natural state, the program escapes the
sordid world of political self-interest. It seems to occur almost by gravity,
and to be motivated more by remorse than by self-interest. But, in that

51. See, e.g., J. BUcHANAN & G. TULLOCK, supra note 47; D. MAYHEW, CONGRESS: THSE
ELECTORAL CONNECTION (1974); W. NIsKANEN, BUREAUCRACY OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
(1971); M. OLSON, THE LOGIC OF COLLECTIVE ACTION (1965).
52. For a public choice analysis that broadens the concept of interest groups, and
advances an explanation for reregulation of that basis, see Weingast, Regulation, Reregulation,
and Deregulation: The Political Foundations of Agency Clientele Relationships, 44 L. &
CONTEMP. PROBS. 147 (1981).
53. For characteristic expressions, see D. ROBYN, BRAKING THE SPECIAL INTERESTS:
TRUCKING DEREGULATION AND THE POLITICS OF POLICY REFoRM (1987); A. STONE, supra note
37, at 171-95; THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEREGULATION: INTEREST GROUPS IN THE REGULA-
TORY PROCESS (R. Noll & B. Owen eds. 1983); Wilson, The Politics of Regulation, in THE
POLITICS OF REGULATION (J. Wilson ed. 1980).
54. Cass Sunstein has suggested that the doctrine of substantive due process was based
on a similar view that market allocations constitute a natural baseline against which government
action must be judged. Sunstein, Lochner's Legacy, 87 CoLum. L. REv. 873 (1987).
19881 MYTH OF THE MARKET 1263

case, reregulation constitutes positive action, a reassertion of the interest

group dynamic that deregulation had escaped, and a return to the unnatural
regulatory order that this dynamic spawns.
One difficulty with this view is that ordinary markets depend on the
common law of contracts, a rather precise and consistently enforced set of
legal rules. There are two notions, however, that can be invoked to absorb
these rules into the natural order. The first is the assumption of social
contract theory that contracts, and the rules of contract, are a naturally
occurring phenomenon that preexists society, either historically or concep-
tually. The second is the view that common law in general is the way things
simply are, an articulation of the natural order, rather than an identifiable
set of governmental rules. Justice Holmes identified and attacked this view
quite decisively, 55 but it has never really died, as Cass Sunstein 6 and
Lawrence Tribe 7 have pointed out. 8 With both contract theory and the
common law in general possessing these longstanding claims to naturalness,
the use of contract law to enforce private agreements seems perfectly natural
and unrelated to the mettlesome clan of regulatory programs.
Once again, economic analysis is linked closely to this political theory
of action and nonaction. Just as economic analysis tells us that a free
market maximizes wealth, it tells us that regulations which protect the
market, or avoid disrupting it, will have a similar effect. Economic analysis
thus adds a rather precise, normative argument to the image of political
nonaction; these nonactions, which include deregulation and the common
law, can be regarded as qualitatively different from other governmental
policies because they tend to maximize wealth. In addition, maintaining a
free market preserves the effectiveness of economics itself. To the extent
that the free market is protected, modern economics can describe relation-
ships within society, rather than simply providing an argument against those
relationships, as it would in a regulated state.
The effort to extend economic models to political behavior provides
further reason for favoring the free market. This effort depends upon the
view that this behavior is a self-interested effort to maximize legislators'
reelection, bureaucrats' power, and citizens' benefits. Any other behavior,
such as the desire to secure the public good, simply cannot be modelled in
economic terms. The economic analysis of political action thus tends to
delegitimate that action by portraying its motives as venal. This does not
quite explain why nonintrusion or deregulation is not similarly motivated,

55. See, e.g., Southern Pac. Co. v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205, 222 (1917) ("The common
law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky but the articulate voice of some sovereign...
that can be identified."); see also Holmes, The Path of the Law, 10 HAmv. L. REv. 457
(1897).
56. See Sunstein, supra note 51, at 883-902.
57. L. TamE, AmEicAN CoNsTrrrnoNA LAW 561-81, 1711-15 (2d ed. 1988).
58. In a particularly striking affirmation, the United States Supreme Court held that
passage of a statute did not constitute state action because the statute simply codified common
law rights. Flag Bros. v Brooks, 436 U.S. 149 (1978).
1264 WASHINGTON AND LEE LA W REVIEW [Vol. 45:1249

but it will focus attention on the self-interested motives of any program

that comes under scrutiny. If one assumes that economic theory already
explains the market itself, and that the only remaining problem for the
theory is to explain political intrusions, then scrutiny will be directed to
those actions that alter the market, rather than the actions that maintain
it. Thus, the desire for a comprehensive economic model tends to generate
a concern with the self-interested motivations of the regulators and rere-
gulators.
III. THE LIMITS OF THE DEREGULATORY VISION

The natural market image that underlies deregulatory and reregulatory

discourse, and its attendant views of individuals and politics, is not incorrect.
It is simply preempirical; that is, it is generated by a vision of the world,
not by empirical observation or logical proof. This vision may lead to
desirable public policy in many circumstances, and we would be foolish to
reject its implications. But the vision also has serious limitations, as do all
such visions. To evaluate the concept of reregulation, one must recognize
those limitations. In other words, one must get behind the framework which
generates the term reregulation and think about the underlying image it
implies. On that basis, an alternative image can be offered, and the two
can be compared with respect to both their empirical validity and their
normative appeal.
It is important to emphasize that this criticism of market and self-
interest imagery is not intended as an argument that the market is the wrong
social mechanism, that efficiency is the wrong social goal, or that economics
is the wrong social science. The point, rather, is that these mechanisms,
goals, and disciplines do not rest upon any objectively demonstrable foun-
dations. Supporters must argue for the free market in the course of our
ongoing debate about the proper way to organize our society, just as
supporters of regulation, redistribution, or the use of sociology must argue
for those mechanisms, goals, and disciplines. Very often, because the free
market efficiency perspective is an appealing approach and is embedded in
our cultural traditions, it will prevail. But it is simply a myth to transform
these social choices into transcendent necessities.

A. Society
As an empirical matter, there can be little doubt that a free market,
however "natural" it may seem to us, is not the usual manner in which
social relations are organized. Studies of premodern societies have found
varying amounts of market behavior, but they also find innumerable rituals,
regulations, and traditions-a dense medium of rules, most of which bear
little relationship to free exchange.5 9 These rules are not an artifact of small,

59. See, e.g., M. DOUGLAS, PusRiY AND DANGER (1984); E. DUsu-mHi, THE ELEMENTARY
FoRms OF THE Rma ous Ln'a (J. Swain trans. 1976); K. PoLAN i, PRWmVE, ARcHAIc AND
MODERN EcoNoMIES (1971); A. VAN GENNEP, TiE Rrras OF PASSAGE (M. Vizedom & G. Caffe
trans. 1961).
1988] MYTH OF THE MARKET 1265

backward societies but a general feature of our social origins. When the
curtain rises upon human history, it does not reveal unregulated commu-
nities, or communities taking their first hesitant, politically motivated steps
toward regulation. Instead, it rises on a veritable science fiction world of
comprehensive rules, public surveillance, state trading and manufacturing
monopolies, and great masses of people marching in regimented teams to
build vast structures with no instrumental function. Early civilizations were
not unregulated or partially regulated cultures, but tightly organized islands,
walled off from the surrounding chaos by an elaborate and intricate set of
social regulations.60
In fact, it is difficult to find any society that maintained unregulated
markets, or that included free exchange as an aspect of its ideology, until
eighteenth-century Europe. Precisely why such markets and their attendant
ideology developed at this time is far from clear. G. M. Trevelyan suggests
that the Glorious Revolution, a conservative, rights-oriented reaction to the
aleatory illegalities of the Stuart monarchy, generated a distrust of collective
action and corporate institutions in the century which followed. 6' Combined
with the Enlightenment mentality, and the first stirrings of the industrial
revolution, this distrust produced an age of individualism and of govern-
mental noninvolvement with private affairs. By the following century, it
had been transformed into an ideology. While this ideology flourished in
political discourse, it rapidly was abandoned as a practice-in Britain, during
the latter half of the nineteenth century, and in the United States, during
the first third of the twentieth. 62 The power of private citizens, which seemed
familiar and benign when exercised by Britain's landed aristocrats or Amer-
ica's small entrepreneurs, became overwhelming and socially unacceptable
when wielded by owners of vast industrial empires. So collective authority
was reasserted: the state took responsibility for education, public health,
housing, workplace conditions, workers' rights, and the maintenance of the
poor. It was this new program that put the lie to Marx's dire predictions
of class struggle, and insured the existence of capitalist democracies. Thus,
the unregulated market represents a brief and bygone phase of human
history, although it gave birth to an ideology that continues to the present
day.
Nor does the free market seem to have any natural connection with
industrial culture. While industrialization began during the laissez faire era,
there were obviously innumerable other social factors at work, including

60. See B. ALLCHIN & R. ALLcHiN, TnE BmT OF INDIAN CIVILZATION (1968); M. COE,
TnE MAYA (1971); J. MASON, THE AN cENT CIVILIZATIONS OF PERU (1957). On the economic
features of early civilizations, see TRADE AND MARKET IN THE EARLY EMPnEs (K. Polanyi, C.
Arensberg & H. Pearson eds. 1957).
61. 3 G. M. TRE ELYAN, HISTORY OF ENGLAND 11-15 (1926).
62. For Britain, see id. at 151-80, 232-52; see also A. BRIGGS, VICTORUN PEOPLE 168-
295 (1955). For the United States, see S. HAYS, THE RESPONSE TO INDUSRiALISM 1885-1914
(1957); R. HOFSTADTER, THE AGE OF REFORm (1955); A. LINK, WOODROW WILsoN ANmTM
PROG EssIVE ERA (1954).
1266 WASHINGTON AND LEE LA W REVIEW [VYol. 45:1249

the growth of science, the Reformation, and European colonialism. More-

over, Russia and Japan have reached levels of economic development
comparable to Western Europe and America by relying on state control,
not laissez faire. 63 There has been much discussion about whether these
nations would be better off with less centralized planning, and whether it
is their successes or their failures that should be attributed to their collective
actions. Nonetheless, their example serves any natural connection between
industrialization and laissez faire, because no one can argue that Japan and
the Soviet Union are not industrialized, and no one can argue that they are
unregulated. Moreover, the non-Western countries that have industrialized
most successfully in recent years-South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore,
and Taiwan-have followed the corporatist, regulatory model. This may be
a feature of East Asian culture, to be sure, but that only supports the
point: the approach to industrialization is a product of culture, not a natural
process that transcends the social context. Thus, empirical evidence strongly
suggests that the free market is a culturally specific phenomenon, rather
than a natural form of human, or even industrial society.
There may appear to be something about the free market that differs
from other social programs because it "just happened;" it was not the
product of conscious social planning, like wealth redistribution. But, that
position simply restates our cultural experience. The free market may seem
natural to us, but monarchical authority seemed natural to our predecessors,
government control seems natural to the Japanese, and theocratic rule
seemed natural to Medieval Europe and the Maya. That which is embedded
in one's culture always seems embedded in the nature of reality because
culture constructs the reality that we perceive. The very dichotomy between
autonomous occurrence and conscious planning, which lies at the base of
the entire claim, is cultural; we perceive the distinction, and attach signifi-
cance to it because that is our experience.
The market is not quite as autonomous as it appears, even within our
cultural context. It depends upon a rather specific set of social rules and
programs, most notably the enforcement of private contracts and the
centralized control of money. We tend to ignore the programmatic aspect
of contractual rules because they were developed by decentralized decision-
makers, and emerged from a dispute resolution process, rather than being
the product of conscious, centrally created social policy. But all this natu-
ralness is an illusion; the enforcement of private contracts seems natural to
us because it is ours. Placing power in the hands of lawyers and judges,
rather than bureaucrats, may be an unusual way to govern a society, but
few outsiders would fail to perceive it as a form of governance. With
respect to money, even the decentralized feature of government regulation

63. For the role of central planning in these countries, see 0. IoFFE, THE SOVIET ECONOMIC
SYsTEM: A LEdAL ANALYSIS (1987); C. JOHNSON, MrT AND THE JAPANESE ECONOsuC MIRACLE
(1982); LAW AND ECONoMIc DEVELOPMENT IN TIE SOVIET UNION (P. Maggs, G. Smith & G.
Ginsburg eds. 1982).
1988] MYTH OF THE MARKET 1267

disappears. Money supplies have been regulated by some executive agency

through most of the free market era.64 At present, all major industrial
nations rely upon a highly administered mechanism-totally symbolic cur-
rency, issued against the general credit of the government, and controlled
by its central bank. Again, the free market is simply a social choice for a
particular kind of regulation, not only in its negative features of norintrusion
upon private agreement, but in its positive features of enforcing those
agreements, and creating the money with which they are transacted. 65

B. Individuals
The vision of individuals that is derived from the free market image,
and thus underlies deregulation and reregulation discourse, is no less cul-
turally specific than the market image itself. As an empirical matter, societies
simply do not consist of autonomous individuals with independent prefer-
ences based on their own self-interest. Both the phylogeny and ontogeny of
cultural experience suggests that there exists a complex interaction between
individuals and their society, and that this interaction creates individuals as
we know them. In terms of social phylogeny, the contract theory is obviously
not a real anthropological account; people do not exist outside of culture,
nor do they have a set of recognizable independent values apart from their
cultural context. Rather, culture constructs the individual by defining inter-
ests, generating preferences, and establishing a system of symbolic rewards,
material allocations, and power relationships through which those interests
and preferences are expressed. Social ontogeny recapitulates this process.
Our individual experience is not one of standing outside our culture and
deciding whether it meets our desires. Rather, we are "thrown" into a
social context long before we are able to make critical evaluations, or even
able to think of ourselves as selves. 66 By the time we are ready to make
any significant individual choices, we speak, act, and think in culturally
constructed ways.
In virtually every society, of course, individuals are able to separate
themselves from their established roles, to perceive a field of action that
ranges well beyond the limits of social approval, and, in some cases, to act
on their perceptions. To conclude, however, that these thoughts and actions
transcend the cultural context and reveal a preexisting set of preferences
oversimplifies the concept of a culture. Cultures do not consist exclusively
of rigorously defined roles, but create a complex, ever-changing set of roles
and meanings. They contain within themselves the possibility of dissent,
transformation, violation of social norms, and self-aggrandizement at the

64. Adam Smith recognized this necessity for regulation of money. See A. SmrrH, THEs
WEALTH OF NATIONS 304-08 (1937 ed.).
65. For a description of monetary control in the United States, see S. MAiSEL, MANAGIn G
rm DOLLAR (1973); T. MAYER, J. DUESENBERRY & R. ALmER, MONEY, BANKiNG AND THE
ECONOMY (2d ed. 1984).
66. M. HEMIEGGER, BEING AND Tmum (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson trans. 1962).
1268 WASHINGTON AND LEE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 45:1249

expense of existing traditions. But all of these actions are structured by

culture, and played out in a culturally constructed arena. Most societies
experience dissent, for example, but the character and meaning of that
dissent is as variable and as contextual as the traditions it opposes.
We may feel intuitively certain that we, as individuals, are motivated
by autonomous, self-interested behavior, and that our society is structured
in response to motivations of that sort. But in this instance, our intuitions
and our observations of ourselves and of our society constitute a rather
unreliable datum. Autonomous, self-interested behavior is our own cultural
norm. This behavior provides our dominant theory for justifying our
political regime, and a working set of motivations for our economic markets.
Clearly, we do not believe in and practice this behavior in opposition to
our culture; we do so because it is our culture, because our culture constructs
us in this way. This argument can be carried too far, of course, as one can
describe every theory or belief as culturally specific. But in this case, the
imagery of markets and autonomous individuals is so clearly a cultural
perspective that we cannot accept our own intuitions about the subject as
evidence of a transcultural phenomenon.

C. Politics
The role of culture and society undercuts any theory of politics or of
the state that is derived from the free market image. Since there is no
evidence to support the view that the market is a natural form of social
organization, and there is no evidence to support the view that individuals
are anterior to society, there is no reason to assume that the polity is best
conceived as a contractual alliance among natural antagonists. Rather,
society and individuals interact as part of a collectivity. Given that inter-
action, the social structure must be understood as a collective choice, to
the extent that it constitutes a choice at all. We do not begin as autonomous
individuals who choose a social structure; we begin as members of a social
structure, whose range of decisions is defined in relation to that structure.
The initial question, therefore, is not what kind of society we want to
create, but how we change or preserve the society in which we exist. This
clearly applies to our own particular social contract myth. We speak of the
Constitution as a contract among individuals, but, even apart from its
historical antecedents like the Articles of Confederation or the state consti-
tutions, the Constitution clearly was adopted through an existing institutional
structure, and by a group of people who possessed a preexisting sense of
themselves as a decisionmaking collectivity.
Turning to practical, contemporary politics, the same conclusion emerges.
The modern state clearly has the power to displace any social structure, like
the market, that seems to .respond to individual preferences. That power,
of course, is precisely what leads many market-oriented thinkers to be highly
distrustful of collective action. In doing so, however, these thinkers ac-
knowledge the primacy of the collectivity; their arguments are generally
directed to that collectivity because that is where decisions must be made.
1988] MYTH OF THE MARKET 1269

Of course, those decisions might well empower individuals to express certain

preferences through the market, as these thinkers recommend. But the
desirability of such an approach is necessarily a matter for debate, a debate
carried out in a collective, political context.
There is nothing in the nature of that debate to suggest that market
solutions should be preferred a priori to other alternatives. The only thing
that distinguishes the market from any other social policy is the belief that
the market is a natural form of social organization. Once we part with that
belief, the market simply becomes one option that fulfills some purposes
and frustrates others. Maintaining or restoring the free market becomes an
ordinary political decision, subject to the same public choice phenomena as
any other. Some legislators want to regulate the market to appeal to powerful
interest groups; others want to preserve the market in order to appeal to
different, equally powerful interest groups. There being no saints in sight,
our only choice is between rival sinners.
Thus, deregulation cannot be viewed as a miraculous release from
interest group pressure or as the sudden result of society coming to its
senses. In fact, a wide variety of interest groups are aligned on the side of
deregulation. With respect to the financial services industry, every industry
group has championed deregulation of the other guy's business and pres-
ervation of its own. Securities firms have been delighted to see deposit
services deregulated, but have fought the deregulation of underwriting with
savage ferocity; large banks have been insistent that the deregulation of
underwriting is central to our national well-being but are determined to
deny other financial institutions access- to deposit insurance or to the
payment system. This debate has proceeded as a struggle among these
various groups, not as an effort to restore the natural order.

IV. THE POssmITY OF ALTERNATIVE VISIONS

A. Policy
The terms we use reflect and in many cases alter the way we concep-
tualize our policy debates. With respect to the financial services industry,
most people characterize the elimination of interest rate restrictions, the
abandonment of geographic barriers to interstate banking, and the increasing
overlap in products among various financial services firms as a process of
deregulation. The consumer legislation involving creditor practices, credit
extension, funds availability, and payments generally might then be seen as
a reregulatory initiative.
As suggested above, this is not a particularly illuminating way to view
these events. The market imagery that stands behind the terms "deregula-
tion" and "regulation" is no better than a "Whig" interpretation. 67 By
taking the free market as a natural starting point and autonomous self-

67. H. BUTTrRFIELD, THE WInG INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY (1965).

1270 WASHINGTON AND LEE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 45:1249

interest as a universal pattern of behavior by both market participants and

public officials, the market interpretation of history obscures the complex
interplay of values and strategies. It suggests that every act of regulation is
a triumph of special interest groups at the expense of citizens in general,
or a grim necessity in the face of market failure. This market interpretation
of history also suggests that every act of regulation in the wake of a
deregulatory movement is reregulation, where special interests or grim
necessity reassert themselves. Human progress, according to this view, is
measured by the freedom of the market and its restoration following the
regulatory night.
6s
In fact, there is no such teleology; instead, as Arthur Okun suggests,
there is an ongoing contest between the market-oriented policy of economic
efficiency and such other values as redistribution, social stability, or con-
sumer protection. Each strategy that emerges from this normative stew needs
to be evaluated in its own right and within its own context, not against a
fixed background formed by one of these contested values. The more useful
perspective, therefore, is that the recent events in the financial services
industry involve rival visions of the industry in question. As a society, a
collectivity, we must choose among these rival visions. There is no natural
ground plane to fall back upon; every policy represents a choice, a choice
that is necessarily being made by the collective processes that govern our
69
society.
The great difficulty is that we have no coherent way to choose among
social policies. We know how to carry on the debate, and we do so with
considerable enthusiasm, as the history of the financial services industry
suggests. Moreover, the results that emerge are often perfectly respectable,
reflecting the Anglo-American talent for practical politics. Nonetheless, it
is irritating to lack any conceptually satisfying methodology for structuring
and resolving such debates. The siren song of economics and efficiency is
that they provide such a methodology; if we demote them to being one of
several disciplines and policies, we lose the sense of certainty with which
they beckon us.
Jurgen Habermas suggests that we can never develop a methodology
for choosing among social policies, that there will never be persuasive rules
for structuring or closing off our normative debates. 70 Instead, he proposes
a continuing dialogue, with formal rules about the kinds of arguments that
can be advanced. This is certainly a useful antidote to positivism, which is
Habermas' bete noir, but like many critiques, it bears the imprint of its
target. Habermas seems overly optimistic about our ability to develop fixed
and finally persuasive rules to govern our normative debates. These debates
proceed not only by abstract, reasoned argument, which is Habermas'

68. A. OKUN, EQUALrTY AND EFFICIENCY: TiE BIG TRADEOFF (1975).

69. For discussions of regulation at this level, see THE LIMITS OF GOVERNMENT REGuLATION
(J. Gatti ed. 1981); RIGHTS AND REULATION (T. Machan & M. Johnson eds. 1983).
70. J. HABmAM{s, THE THEORY OF ComMUmcATIvE ACTION (T. McCarthy trans. 1983).
1988] MYTH OF THE MARKET

choice, but also through social institutions, political action, and public
opinion.7 ' In the financial services field, for example, the rapid development
of consumer protection laws resulted largely from the consumer movement's
ability to organize and to function effectively as a political lobby and a
social force. This was not simply because the consumer movement could
threaten legislators with electoral punishment. Rather, the public policy
arguments advanced on behalf of consumers would not be understood,
would not be perceived by the intuitive process that dominates politics,
without an organizational structure to argue in their favor.
All this may seem rather pessimistic. Not only is there no definitive
methodology for designing social policy, as proponents of economic analysis
promise, but there is no definitive way to structure our policy debates, as
Habermas and other critics of such methodologies suggest. But this sense
of pessimism is itself a social construct, a reflection of our unrealistic
expectation that some ground of certainty exists to resolve our present
quandaries. A more reasonable expectation is that we can develop a variety
of devices to improve the ongoing process in which we are engaged. These
devices can be discoursive, technical, or pragmatic, as Donald McCloskey
suggests;72 they could operate at any of the levels at which our normative
debates are conducted.
One such device is a recognition of the belief systems implicit in our
choice of terms, and an explicit evaluation of those belief systems. As
suggested here, the terms deregulation and reregulation carry with them a
rather elaborate image of a free market as an ideal form of social organi-
zation. That image is neither wrong nor reprehensible, but its claim to
universal truth is eminently debatable. Structuring our discourse according
to these terms obscures the contours of the debate, burying its controversial
elements at a depth where the opposing sides can react only with affirmation
or annoyance, rather than reflective evaluation. Those who favor "dereg-
ulation" tend to feel astonishment that anyone would fail to perceive the
inefficiency and undesirability of regulation. Those who welcome "reregu-
lation" regard their opponents as morally insensitive to the miseries and
rigors of the market. But these positions get us nowhere. If we perceive,
instead, the two groups as proposing rival public policies, we can more
readily evaluate each alternative, even if we must do so without the benefit
of a synthesizing methodology. We then have the option of recognizing that
they each may address different social problems on different aspects of an
issue, and we can avoid being drawn into global affirmations or dismissals.
This alternative approach to social policy debates implies a less heroic,
but more realistic role for scholars. No scholar will ever find the key to
social policy, the method of analysis which demonstrates decisively that one
policy is correct, and all the others wrong. There is no such key. What

71. For a description of public opinion on these matters, see S. LIPSET & W. ScHNEIDER,
THE CoNFiDEN CE GAP 221-56 (1983).
72. See D. McCLosKEY, supra note 43, at 36-46.
1272 WASHINGTON AND LEE LA W REVIEW [Vol. 45:1249

scholarship provides is a way to understand the policies that lie behind our
institutions and instrumental strategies, or the institutions and strategies that
our policies imply. Such clarifications and elaborations do not constitute
the entirety of legitimate social policy debate, but they represent one of its
more significant components.

B. Economics
A second device for improving our process of social decisionmaking is
the use of technical knowledge. In the case of financial services, the body
of knowledge that comes most naturally to mind is, of course, economics.
But economics, like scholarship in general, cannot function as a means of
resolving the debate about alternatives; it serves as a comprehensive meth-
odology for evaluating social policies only if one has already resolved the
debate in favor of a policy of wealth maximization, or efficiency. Although
this is widely recognized, some economists and law and economic scholars
have overstated their case by trying to demonstrate that efficiency is an
objectively desirable goal. Once economics has been manacled to efficiency
in this way by its friends, the two are readily exiled together by their
enemies.
Deregulatory discourse only deepens the confusion. Because it is based
on a preempirical and preconceptual image of the market, deregulation is
more difficult to domesticate than the connection between economics and
efficiency. Deregulation suggests that there is no other useful way to
approach social issues because markets, autonomous self-interest, and a
polity of antagonistic individuals are part of reality, the way things really
are. Because economics can model these phenomena, the discourse suggests
that economics is a natural method of analysis. And because economics
indicates that these naturally occurring markets are efficient, the discourse
suggests that efficiency is a naturally occurring social policy.
In fact, none of these links are necessary ones. The ability of economics
to model unregulated markets, and its conclusions that such markets are
efficient, is only one function of this discipline. Economics also is capable
of dealing with phenomena outside unregulated markets, and it can be
utilized for many social policies besides efficiency. In the case of individuals,
economists long have acknowledged that they cannot explain the origin of
human preferences, nor can they make definitive comparisons between one
person's preferences and another's. What they can do is to predict market
phenomena that respond to preexisting human preferences. In other words,
given individual desires and some other data, economists can predict the
price. The same is true for society at large. Economics cannot tell us how
to choose between rival social policies, for that depends upon the social
preferences that emerge from our political process. In some cases, we want
efficiency; in other cases, we want redistribution, consumer protection, or
stability.
But economics can indicate the prices of these other policies. Such
social prices are more difficult to model mathematically, but even at a lesser
1988] MYTH OF THE MARKET 1273

level of precision, economic analysis provides useful information. The fact

that consumer protection, for example, can only be achieved at a given
social cost does not prove that this policy is undesirable, any more than
the higher price of a scarce good can prove to an individual that the good
should not be bought. But it is certainly helpful to know the price before
purchasing the policy. Furthermore, economics often can tell us how a
particular policy can be achieved at the lowest possible price. One strategy
for protecting consumers may impose high costs by disrupting markets,
while another may achieve the same level of protection with less disruption
and less cost. Such intrapolicy comparisons, like intrapersonal or ordinal
comparisons of preferences, are more defensible than the interpolicy variety.
It is virtually unarguable, for practical purposes, that we should prefer to
achieve our chosen goal at a lower price, rather than at higher one.
Such uses of economics must be distinguished from a market failure
argument. Market failure is an aspect of efficiency analysis, since a market
that fails is one that cannot achieve efficient results without some form of
corrective intervention. Even so, the law and economics movement has not
been particularly enthusiastic about exploring alternative modes of interven-
tion; the preferred approach seems to be a Herculean effort to explain away
the apparent market failure so that no intervention is necessary. This instinct
springs from the preempirical norm that the market is natural and desirable
per se. But there is certainly nothing in a market failure analysis that
conflicts with a policy of economic efficiency or with a comprehensive
economic analysis. The argument based on alternative policies is different.
It does not claim that the market has failed in a particular area, but that
a market is not the social policy that we should employ to achieve our
objectives. While economic analysis can still be used in designing such a
policy, it must clearly be subordinate to other considerations.
There is a tendency to conflate the distinction between market failure
arguments and social policies that aim at objectives other than efficiency.
Market-oriented scholars who recognize the value of alternative policies may
try to absorb these alternatives into their economic framework by presenting
these policies as solutions for market failure. 7 This locates the alternative
policies within a general context of efficiency and treats them as secondary
modifications of the efficiency analysis. In some cases, this conflation of
separate arguments may serve a social purpose by building a provisional
consensus between rival groups. The scholar's role, however, is to think
clearly about these matters, to disentangle the interwoven strands so that
we can evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of various social policy
alternatives, and the value of reweaving them.

CONCLUSION

The terms "deregulation" and "regulation:" have an au courante

crackle to them, but they spring from a rather dusty system of free market

73. See supra note 39 (citing sources).

1274 WASHINGTON AND LEE LA W REVIEW [Vol. 45:1249

imagery that has been with us for some time. This system, partly normative
and partly conceptual, makes distinct assertions about social organization,
human behavior, and political action. By using deregulation-regulation
discourse, we place ourselves amidst this imagery, and thus take its assertions
for granted. We assume that the discourse is telling us about the nature of
society, human beings, and politics, when it is really telling us about itself.
This does not mean that the imagery produces bad results; it simply means
that it is imagery. Those who want us to adopt this imagery must present
arguments in its favor, not unprovable declarations of its inevitability. They
must give us a reason why we should think of our society and ourselves in
these terms rather than in others.
As it turns out, there are some rather powerful arguments for doing
so. Free market imagery generates a social system that allows us to achieve
economic or material efficiency. That is an appealing goal, and it is especially
appealing in a commercial area like the financial services industry. In
addition, this imagery permits us to use economics, the most precise of our
social sciences, as a comprehensive methodology for solving social problems.
The power of economics should not be underestimated, particularly when
its practitioners adopt a responsive, nontendentious attitude toward market
failure. Many of the consumer issues in the financial services industry, for
example, can fully be described and analyzed in purely economic terms.
But the appeal of efficiency and the power of economics should be
used to enlighten, not to dazzle. Efficiency is only one of many social
policies. Public debate often runs various policies together, probably to our
great advantage, but when the strands are disentangled, there is no evidence
that society is prepared to opt for efficiency to the exclusion of all other
choices. Scholars, whose job it is to trace the separate strands, cannot prove
that efficiency is the only valid one. Economics, however readily it meshes
with efficiency, has many other uses. It can serve other policies as well,
although none of the others will grant it the seductive sense of centrality
that material or economic efficiency confers upon it.