How Free Is the “Free Market”?
See if you can spot anything wrong with the following claim, a version of which seems to appear in a book, magazine, or newspaper every few weeks for as long as I’ve been reading public commentary on economic matters:
The dominant idea guiding economic policy in the United States and much of the globe has been that the market is unfailingly wise…. But lately, a striking unease with market forces has entered the conversation. The world confronts problems of staggering complexity and consequence, from a shortage of credit following the mortgage meltdown, to the threat of global warming. Regulation … is suddenly being demanded from unexpected places.
Now, a paragraph like this one printed in the New York Times opinion section on December 30, 2007 — an article called “The Free Market: A False Idol After All?” — makes anyone versed in economic history crazy with frustration. Just about every word is misleading in several ways, and yet some version of this scenario appears as the basis of vast amounts of punditry.
I find this is very often a problem. People have it drilled into their head that we live in a free country and we have a free economy. As this article points out so well we in no way have either. That ignorance and misunderstanding provides a huge, huge barrier for libertarians and free-marketeers when attempting to explain our positions to the average person. When you change the definition of a word it makes it difficult to have discussions.
Related posts:
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:56 pm
I must admit the more I research the subject, the moral I realize that several "beefs" I have with corporations stem from the fact that they are subsidized by the government. Here is a good little audio segment on the subject.
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:13 pm
The Conservative Nanny State gives lots of examples. He has a socialist solution for just about everything though and is in some cases (software) ignorant of competition.
The Corporation also has the same problem. I have nearly finished my point by point refute. If I have some down time I’ll finish and post.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Here is another interesting blog post on the subject of government subsidization of industry. It’s long as all hell though, as are most things on that blog.
January 25th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
A recent article by John Stossel on "Hating Free Enterprise."