Both self-styled "liberals" and conservatives have their own reasons to refuse to recognize the progressive nature of the free market:

• For those statists who seek to pass as "liberals," such an admission would threaten to expose the regressive nature of many of the programs they propose.

• Those conservatives who purport to uphold the free market (or, at least, those free-market policies that they find palatable) base their case on traditionalist arguments. To admit that the free market and the culture it engenders are essentially radical and progressive rather than traditionalist would reveal the fundamental intellectual inadequacy of their approach.