Back in 1991-1992 the fictional character Murphy Brown became a single mother on the eponymous fictional TV show. Apparently real people, like Dan Quayle, Phyllis Schlafly, and Pat Robertson got very upset about this fictional story. This fictional story about a different kind of family, one with a baby and a mother and no intention of marrying to create a 'traditional family' because part of presidential election. The show, which stuck by it's guns and even had a scene where all sorts of different families were celebrated on the set, saw two more years of high rating, and four more seasons. The free market, which was filled of people in all kinds of family situations, said the elites and their fantasies were wrong. We love children, we honor those who care for them, and we have no time for those who use them for political gain, but we do tolerate when they pull our heartstrings on TV.
Today we see this theme in other situations. We see it in the resignation of Brendan Eich. We see it in the immediate doubling down in the Honey Maid graham cracker commercial. We see it in the second Superbowl advertisement where Cheerios features and expanding interracial(whatever that means, I suppose the Christians want the kind of incest of Adam and Eve children) family. So does this mean the free market is a force of good. Maybe.
Brendan Eich was the top Mozzilla man. Under the Ayn Rand so many live under, this meant he was the only man for the job, and the fact he resigned simply for giving $1000 to support the formal removal of rights from certain people for arbitrary reasons is a great injustice. There is no acknowledgement of the free market forces that required his removal. Again, in this Rand-esque fanstasy the best workers would be paid the most at Mozilla, until such a time that they were no longer needed, and they would have no option but to work at Mozilla. A rational person would never work somewhere else where would they be paid less. Therefore, as long as Eich was a fair ruler, and did not actively discriminate at work on the basis of sexual preference, there was no reason for him to leave.
However, worshiping of Ayn Rand the theories she espouses does not make those theories true. Workers, especially tech workers, have some mobility and make decisions for to move for many reasons. Corporations are aware of this danger and have taken steps to form, likely illegal agreements, to prevent it. So if workers have a choice, they may choose to not work where their leader is not a bigoted asshole. Other agents in the free market may choose to encourage their customers not to use the bigoted assholes product. This is the free market, as insincere and profit driven as it may be.
Now in, one of the above articles, if is argued that this removal is unfair because other companies have employs, perhaps, the article claims, even executives. I would argue this does not matter. First, the free market, not any individual, punished Mozilla. It was, in terms of the conservative fantasy, the invisible hand that removed Eich. Second, no single low or mid level employee defines the company in the way the CEO does. That is why, in conservative fantasy, the CEO deserves huge compensation compared to other employees. Furthermore lets stipulate that Apple does have 13 employees that gave an average of $450 dollars to support prop 8. That is 13 out of 80,000 FTE. Unless one of those employees is name Tim Cook, is doesn't matter. If is possible that none of these 13 are management, or even currently employed at Apple. It is the desperate whining of the elite angry at the Free Market.
The Honey Maid issue is the same thing. Honey Maid is did not make the commercial to piss anyone off. They made the commercial because they need to sell their graham crackers to parents, and part of the market segment are family with same gender parents. They know, as well as we do, that two parent will tend to be more financially stable, and maybe will choose to pay extra for the brand name product. So when all the bigoted assholes starting complaining about the two daddies, they had two choices. Either ignore it and piss of a large market segment that likely had the money to buy the product, or defend the commercial and piss off the segment of that maybe did not have the money to buy the product. They made a decision informed by the free market, vis a vis the responses they received in response to the ad.
One things that is changing in all this is the majority. The 1% may have around 1/3 of the wealth, but they can only buy some many boxes of crackers, so many boxes of Cheerios, and can only be 1% of the potential TV viewers. Most manufacturers depend of the rest of us to go to the store and spend our increasing dwindling funds on the premium advertised products. They depend on TV shows like 'How I met your Mother' which pays the very out NPH about $200,000 per episode to sell product.
It will be entertaining to watch the future temper tantrums of the spoiled elite. And I don't dispair. It was clear that even when Dan Quayle was elected Vice President, the world that he advocated, where white men could do as many drugs as they wanted while minorities could be prosecuted for the same crimes, was going away. I am still waiting for that world to go away, but I have faith.