Myths. A Rant.

The "free market" Utopia is a myth. Here on the left, we are painfully aware of that eh?

Now, Im not a communist, but I am a firm believer in social justice and the idea that we are all in the same boat.  I am also of the firm belief that humanity tops corporatism in all things. I guess I think a mixed market is better.

The free market myth goes thus: Let the market decide. Prices, wages, and regulations from safety to workers rights. Remove government intervention and hand over the reigns to the Corporate Lords.

Does that sound about right?

Reagan and  Mulroney were great believers in the free market. They pushed their agenda's until everyone got a clue, and voted in parties and politicians who weren't so.....stupid?? Harper and Bush are the next generation to take the mythology to heart. But these guys are Neoliberals. Its kind of like a religion in oh so many ways. You cannot see the "free market". You cannot hear the "free market".  

You just have blind faith that it's there. It all comes from books written by fabled economists and right wing think tanks full of rich folks. No one is allowed to dispute the holy written words.

How does that correlate in the real world?

Well, in a country like Canada it translates to up to 300,000 homeless, 16 percent of children living in poverty, and almost 2 million people about to be homeless. It leads to an insidious dismantling of the safety net including Womens advocacy groups,  welfare and the court challenges program. it means  the decimation of Universal health care, Workers rights being trampled, basic human rights squashed....Its all in the news.

In the US, the free market means similar things, but it has evolved (I know, evolved is one of those scien-temific words) on a far broader scale. I personally think its been slowed in Canada only because of that pesky Trudeau era. I mean, that dude seriously compromised the holy tenants of the "free market". Social housing programs, the abolishment of capital punishment,  Gay people being accepted, a charter of rights and freedoms....That's all librul Humanitarian talk. The RWingnuts hate Trudeau for a reason, he made many of us believe in a Just Society. I mean, he wasn't perfect. But he made us see another way.

With the religion of the "free market" we also have a new class of citizens emerging.

Well not exactly new. I believe the term used to be "serfdom". In an article in the Province  from a couple days ago:

But recent reports of the disgustingly dirty, dangerous interiors of Vancouver's seediest flophouses not only help expose the callousness of some megamillionaire businessmen -- they also punctuate the absence of options for the most wretched.

There was a time when I comfortably turned a blind eye to the infestation of junkies and parasites who collect at the grey-grim corner of Main and Hastings. After all, much of it was, and still is, their own doing.

Wretched. Their own doing. Cut em loose.  

I got the oddest feeling reading this. The writer, was in their own way saying that we should help the homeless and those who are addicted and on the street. Grudgingly, and only because it was now getting so financially difficult.....for them....  

But it was the choice of words that caught my concern and attention. That and the fact that this person really doesn't get that its not just the "drug addicts" anymore. (My personal thoughts are to help everyone, regardless)  Now its whole families forced to head to the worst parts of the city where they may be able to afford some sort of roof, a place where children shouldn't ever be.

Now the "wretched" are from all walks of life. Now the "wretched", are living breathing recipients of the bounty of the "free market". Hail to the gods of corporatism. Its interesting that many of these same worshipers of the Mythology of the Free market, use the bible as a shield to do it.

Now don't I recall something in the ten commandments? Summin about "false gods"? Think Jesus would have been a believer in the free market? Nope. He was definitely a liberal.

Crossposted atA Creative Revolution.

•  Just meandering today.

  Needed to spew. Thanks if you got this far.

  by pale cold on Thu Nov 01, 2007 at 11:00:12 AM PDT

  •  Had a go-round with Purple Haze

    over this when it came to health insurance. He, like most libertarian types, sees the free market as the answer to everything, and LIKES the idea of a two-tiered society. I don't.  He thinks CEOs who make ridiculous salaries for firing workers and exporting jobs deserve their cash. What's funny is that I quoted J.P. Morgan at him, one of the original robber barons, who believed no CEO should make more than 20X what the average worker in his company made.  

    Morgan was right. People who want to disable the safety neck can go to hell.

    by irishwitch on Thu Nov 01, 2007 at 11:31:15 AM PDT

    •  Im not

      A Christian, but I think there has to be a place for people that want to cause so many harm.

      by pale cold on Thu Nov 01, 2007 at 11:44:15 AM PDT

      •  I am Wiccan.

        I figure some went from reptile to human with no intervening stages as a social animal with loyalties to the pack. I figure they'll have accumulated a lotta bad karma.

        by irishwitch on Thu Nov 01, 2007 at 11:58:09 AM PDT

•  Not just in Canada and the US

  This is a global endeavor and so far, those of us in Canada and the US have been relatively insulated from it.  Read "The Shock Doctrine" to see what the market fundamentalists have wrought in other countries.  And yes, they are like any religious cult and thousands of times more powerful than OBL and his gang of thugs.

  by Marie on Thu Nov 01, 2007 at 11:13:01 AM PDT

  •  already have

    :)

    by pale cold on Thu Nov 01, 2007 at 11:13:42 AM PDT

    •  Shocking isn't it?

      Even though much of what is in the book didn't escape me in real time - particularly what has happened in the US, Latin America and Russia - but S. Africa did.  Seeing it all laid out so coherently in one book is truly depressing.  

      by Marie on Thu Nov 01, 2007 at 11:32:19 AM PDT

      •  So cold and calculated.

        The destruction of the "rabble"
        I don't know how anyone thinks that way? And when I try to see it from that side, I feel dirty. Ick.
        Its good that people are writing about it again.

        by pale cold on Thu Nov 01, 2007 at 11:43:09 AM PDT

        •  It meets my definition of evil.

          Why I've come to loathe most of the DEM Party along with the GOP.  Bill Clinton helping his buddy Yeltsin get re-elected, Albright defending the sanctions on Iraq that killed children and the total silence in DC about the economic apartheid in S. Africa.

          by Marie on Thu Nov 01, 2007 at 11:56:59 AM PDT

•  Capitalism only works some of the time

  for limited segments of the population. Most of us have to endure crises, lay-offs, falling wages, disappearing benefits, unfair taxation, and most pervasive of all,
  stress and uncertainty. If we're going to live under
  capitalism, it should be a regulated capitalism with
  safeguards and safety nets. Period.

  by Wildthumb on Thu Nov 01, 2007 at 12:23:47 PM PDT

  •  mixed market.

    not the free fall of free markets...

    zactly.

    by pale cold on Thu Nov 01, 2007 at 12:28:18 PM PDT

  •  A mixed economy-

    the economy serving the people, not the other way around.

    by Hobelhouse on Sun Nov 11, 2007 at 01:20:01 AM PDT