Vice President Vance Agrees with the DSA, and They're Both Wrong
Economic freedom doesn't undermine human flourishing, it helps create it. But there is more to it—some of which is economic, and some of which is not.
Skepticism of free-market capitalism
At this point, it should come as no surprise to read that a growing number of Americans are losing faith in capitalism. A recent Wall Street Journal-NORC survey found that less than half of Americans say capitalism is working well, down from 60% a decade ago, and only 35% believe the American Dream still holds true.
We’ve seen this sentiment play out politically, as well. On the left, so-called “democratic socialism” is no longer a fringe posture. Democratic socialist candidates have succeeded in major primaries across the country, from New York to Colorado. Echelon Insights recently found that Democrats who want the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to have a larger influence on the party outnumber those who want a smaller role by more than double.
But hostility to free market is no longer the exclusive domain of the left, nor is it merely a fringe element of the right. Indeed, Vice President JD Vance has been making an argument similar to those in DSA, simply wrapped in the language of conservatives: that free markets undermine human dignity because they are incompatible with the moral order. Vance has recently repeatedly called for the GOP to move beyond the free-market philosophy that has been a core element of the right for decades.
Commentator Ben Shapiro took the Vice President to task, and his remarks are worth listening to. Shapiro is right that Vance sounds like a Democrat because he has essentially adopted the left’s way of thinking about markets, but more importantly, Shapiro makes a point that the anti-market left and anti-market right both miss:
It isn’t the responsibility of the market economy — let alone of the government — to ensure meaning in a person’s life.
Markets alone do not create human flourishing
There is a kernel of truth in the criticisms from both the left and the right. Some defenders of capitalism point to cheaper and higher quality consumer goods as evidence of economic progress. That’s true.
But cheaper goods alone are not the same thing as human flourishing. A society can have material abundance and still be lonely, atomized, unstable, and spiritually thin. We have seen the costs of fraying social capital, weaker family formation, and declining civic life. People know this instinctively. They do not want a cheaper life that is also a poorer one.
But that is also where the anti-market critique goes wrong. Shapiro points out that markets are not meant to be the sole provider of meaning, purpose, and belonging. They are meant to give people more control over their own lives and the opportunity to build the life they want, inclusive of the necessities of life like the education, the doctor, the home, and the career path they desire.
Ultimately, markets are a mechanism for agency. They are not a replacement for family, faith, friendship, or community; that is, the real sources of fulfillment. It is these institutions of society, combined with the prosperity and dignity of earned success that come from markets, that create human flourishing.
That distinction is central to FREOPP’s mission. FREOPP exists to improve the lives of Americans on the bottom half of the economic ladder using freedom, innovation, and pluralism. We were founded on the idea that the essentials of life should be more affordable and more accessible. And we were founded on the equally important idea that economic reform alone is not enough.
That is why FREOPP has spent years producing original research and thought leadership on both sides of the American Dream. On the economic side, that means housing, health care, education, child care, and workforce training — the things that make what some call the “economics of agency” real for ordinary families. On the non-economic side, it means clarity about marriage as an anti-poverty force, combatting loneliness and social isolation, the role of family and civil society in child welfare, addressing the barriers to responsible choices that translate into mobility, and more.
The same organization that argues for making health care and housing more affordable has also argued that family stability and civil society matter deeply for upward mobility.
Struggling Americans are rejecting socialist radicalism
That combination matters because struggling Americans are not looking for utopian fantasies. They are looking for relief. Poll after polls shows that affordability concerns dominate Americans’ financial worries, with inflation, housing, energy, and health care far outweighing other concerns. The public’s message is not subtle: life is too expensive, and the basics are too hard to reach, no matter how much the cost of a high-quality television has declined.
But the answer to that urgency is not anti-market romanticism. It is not to pretend that government can centrally plan dignity, let alone affordability. And it is not to import the resentments of elite anti-capitalism into the political right.
It’s notable that recent Democratic primary results and survey data show that socialist politics are more popular in whiter, highly educated neighborhoods and among college-educated Democrats, while Black, Hispanic, and lower-income Democrats are less likely to prefer leaders who identify as democratic socialists.
That pattern is a reminder: the people most squeezed by high costs are not sitting around waiting for ideological theater. They feel the pressure of real problems and real deadlines. They want practical answers, not imaginary wish-casting.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently made a similar point from the opposite direction, arguing that radical leftism is not really idealism at all as some have claimed in the past, but something darker and more destructive that seeks to tear down success, innovation, growth, and more; it is a twisted philosophy that deprives people of every element of dignity and fulfillment. He is right about the far left. But the same warning applies to the right when it slips into anti-market victimhood and central planning of its own, including from within the same Administration.
Blaming markets for every social failure is just as shallow as pretending government central planning can heal every social wound.
The American Dream is not only about GDP, prices, or stock indexes. It is about whether people can build a life worth living — one that includes work, family, community, purpose, and a fair shot at upward mobility. Free markets are not the enemy of that dream. They are one of its indispensable foundations.
That is the work FREOPP was created to do: drive solutions that improve the economics of agency and the social and cultural fabric of non-economic life. And it is why we will keep leading with research, ideas, and advocacy that expand the American Dream in full — the material, the social, and the moral — for every American, especially those on the bottom half.
In freedom,
Akash Chougule, President