Where the free market fails
Democratic Underground nicely sums up where the "free market" approach works and doesn't work. Here's where it works:
- Activities that are an intrinsic function of government
- Activities where pertinent third parties are totally unrepresented in the transaction
- Monopolies
- Scarce resources which are essential to American citizens
- Situations where free market principles cannot operate because of lack of essential information
- Services which are required for the public’s welfare
The purported “free market”
Glenn Greenwald's comments regarding the vague terms that control our public policy provoked me to revisit the extremely vague term, "free market." “Free market” is a prime example of a vague term that is used for formulating anti-public policy. It is routinely suggested by our alleged leaders that “free market” refers to the freedom to choose where to spend one’s money. On a day to day basis, this idea seems reasonable. It evokes the image of people selecting fruits and vegetables at an open-air produce market. Modern "free market” policies extend far beyond individual buying decisions, however. In practice, government policies favoring the “free market” prohibit government from “freely” governing. “Free market” policies allow those with large amounts of money to usurp government policy. Policies that favor a wide-open "free market" take political power from ordinary citizens and hand that power to govern to large private for-profit corporations and wealthy individuals. “Free market” is a clever phrase for those who want an economic market that amounts to a baseball game without umpires, a market where corporations “freely” monopolize entire industries by scooping up the competitors, immunizing themselves from liability by buying favorable new laws, jacking up the prices and then giving the consumers the “freedom” to buy from among limited high-priced options. Modern "free market" policies give financially powerful entities the "freedom" to operate free of any government oversight, and the "freedom" to tell consumers to take-it-or-leave-it. [More . . . ]
Shock Doctrine: Take advantage of crises to ram through unpopular policies
Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" is illustrated in this short video. The idea is that political leaders often take advantage of natural and manufactured crises--which cause many folks to become infantilized in response to the trauma--to ram through unpopular policies, quite often "free market" initiatives. Klein's idea has intrigued many, but also received mixed reviews from economists.
In The Tradition of Great American UnAmericanisms
Herman Cain is the latest in a long line of political mouths calling a populist movement UnAmerican. He says Occupy Wall Street is an assault on capitalism and that capitalism and the free market system are what have made America what it is. Can’t argue with that, but his intended meaning is other than reality. Setting that aside for a moment, though, it’s his statement that protests in the street are UnAmerican that I take greatest issue with. I’ve been hearing that from more or less conservative people since I was old enough to be aware of political issues. During the Vietnam era, the antiwar movement gained the hatred of Middle America not because they were wrong but because they were unruly, in the street, loud, and confrontational. “You should work within the system,” people said, “that’s not the way to do it.” Except it was clear that working within the system was not achieving results. The system is so constructed that those who understand where the controls are can make it respond regardless of general public sentiment. The system is often The Problem, and today we have another example. But more fundamentally than that, it was a failure to recognize that people in the street is very much a part of the system. What do we think “freedom of assembly” is all about?