a friend of mine I didn't believe in the "Free Market" and I really didn't do a very good job of defending my position :-). here is what I was trying to get across:-).
The Myth of the “Free Market” and How to Make the Economy Work for Us
Robert Reich
One of the most deceptive ideas continuously sounded by the Right (and its fathomless think tanks and media outlets) is that the “free market” is natural and inevitable, existing outside and beyond government. So whatever inequality or insecurity it generates is beyond our control. And whatever ways we might seek to reduce inequality or insecurity – to make the economy work for us – are unwarranted constraints on the market’s freedom, and will inevitably go wrong.
By this view, if some people aren’t paid enough to live on, the market has determined they aren’t worth enough. If others rake in billions, they must be worth it. If millions of Americans remain unemployed or their paychecks are shrinking or they work two or three part-time jobs with no idea what they’ll earn next month or next week, that’s too bad; it’s just the outcome of the market.
According to this logic, government shouldn’t intrude through minimum wages, high taxes on top earners, public spending to get people back to work, regulations on business, or anything else, because the “free market” knows best.
In reality, the “free market” is a bunch of rules about (1) what can be owned and traded (the genome? slaves? nuclear materials? babies? votes?); (2) on what terms (equal access to the internet? the right to organize unions? corporate monopolies? the length of patent protections? ); (3) under what conditions (poisonous drugs? unsafe foods? deceptive Ponzi schemes? uninsured derivatives? dangerous workplaces?) (4) what’s private and what’s public (police? roads? clean air and clean water? healthcare? good schools? parks and playgrounds?); (5) how to pay for what (taxes, user fees, individual pricing?). And so on.
These rules don’t exist in nature; they are human creations. Governments don’t “intrude” on free markets; governments organize and maintain them. Markets aren’t “free” of rules; the rules define them.
The interesting question is what the rules should seek to achieve. They can be designed to maximize efficiency (given the current distribution of resources), or growth (depending on what we’re willing to sacrifice to obtain that growth), or fairness (depending on our ideas about a decent society). Or some combination of all three – which aren’t necessarily in competition with one another. Evidence suggests, for example, that if prosperity were more widely shared, we’d have faster growth.
The rules can even be designed to entrench and enhance the wealth of a few at the top, and keep almost everyone else comparatively poor and economically insecure.
Which brings us to the central political question: Who should decide on the rules, and their major purpose? If our democracy was working as it should, presumably our elected representatives, agency heads, and courts would be making the rules roughly according to what most of us want the rules to be. The economy would be working for us.
Instead, the rules are being made mainly by those with the power and resources to buy the politicians, regulatory heads, and even the courts (and the lawyers who appear before them). As income and wealth have concentrated at the top, so has political clout. And the most important clout is determining the rules of the game.
Not incidentally, these are the same people who want you and most others to believe in the fiction of an immutable “free market.”
If we want to reduce the savage inequalities and insecurities that are now undermining our economy and democracy, we shouldn’t be deterred by the myth of the “free market.” We can make the economy work for us, rather than for only a few at the top. But in order to change the rules, we must exert the power that is supposed to be ours
7. 
THE "FREE MARKET."
THE "FREE MARKET."
"There is no such thing as the "free market." There never has been, and never will be. It's a fairy tale. Another conservative myth. Pure baloney.It might be theoretically possible for a totally "free market" to exist if the "market" itself was very tiny, such as a very small town where everyone knew and trusted each other. In anything larger, say a country of 300 million, fuggetaboutit!
The great irony is that the very people who so aggressively promote the idea of a "free market" are the actually the last ones who would actually want such a thing. Those would be the CorpCons and the professional politicians they have bought and paid for fair and square. These schemers don't really want a "free market" they want a "rigged market," and that's pretty much what they have. But it can always get even more rigged. And that's what they truly wish for: a world where Big Business is king of the world, and government - the only entity large enough to counter and control Big Business - is small enough to "drown in the bathtub" (at least when it comes to regulating Big Business... otherwise, everybody knows a very Big Government is necessary to rampage around the world promoting Big Business).
Economist Dean Baker puts it succinctly, "The rich and powerful have no interest in the free market when circumventing how the market works to their benefit."
So, what professional conservatives actually mean by the "Free Market" is this:
• Corporations should be FREE to do anything they want.
• Corporations should be FREE to sell anything, anywhere.
• Corporations should be FREE to pay little or nothing to their workers.
• Corporations should be FREE to demand utter loyalty from their workers.
• Corporations should be FREE to return no loyalty whatsoever to their workers.
• Corporations should be FREE to extract, exploit, subjugate and monopolize at will.
• Corporations should be FREE from taxes.
• Corporations should be FREE from regulations.
• Corporations should be FREE of responsibility for any damage they do.
• Corporations should be FREE to influence lawmakers.
• Corporations should be FREE to slaughter the competition any way they can.
The Free market means Corporations are free to do Anything.
So now you know. When conservatives politicians and economists talk about the "free market" it is simply code for Big Business Heaven, a world in which Big Business is free to do whatever it wants.
Of course, this would be Hell for everyone else, including smaller businesses, for which such a "free market" would be a killing field. Giant corporations could swoop in, completely unfettered, and buy out or simply squelch smaller competitors.
And for consumers and workers? Well, the "free market" envisioned by giant multinational corporations would make them hardly better than slaves. Consumers and workers in the unregulated "free market" would be "free" to like it, or lump it. Caveat Emptor, sucker! You say our product blew up in your face or gave you cancer? Prove it! You say the unsafe conditions in our factory led to you getting your hands cut off? Sue us, see if you get anywhere with your "frivolous lawsuit" in the justice system we have rigged up for ourselves.
Parasitic banks would run wild with speculation, buying and selling without constraint, inventing all manner of financial "instruments" with which to use to dissect customers and relieve them of their money, their security, their future.
Privatization of anything and everything would run rampant in the conservative "free market" fantasy.
Let's just imagine what that would directly lead to:
The goal of the professional conservative's "free market" is to assume all of the powers of government, and then take it to the limit, including total control and exploitation of the people.
Your electricity, gas, water would not come from public utilities, but from predatory corporations, which can raise the rates, or cut you off, whenever they want. Toll roads and bridges would proliferate. Think about how corporations and the very rich could put the squeeze on the average citizen with such total and unchecked power.
Judges and jails would be privatized, with a strong profit incentive to lock as many people away for as long as possible. Wars would be completely privatized, with a strong profit incentive to go to battle, and to use up the weapons and equipment so to create the need for more, more, more.
Education would be privatized, with only the wealthy able to afford a decent education, everyone else shunted into "stupidity schools," indoctrinated and taught only enough to become a good worker-bee, or soldier-fodder, for the state and its overlord corporations.
Without government subsidies, price controls and regulations, food production would become wholly predatory. A few corporations without major competition due to proprietary trademarks on genetically modified foodstuffs would dominate. Prices would skyrocket. Food quality and safety would plummet for most of us. Only the rich would be able to afford clean, healthy food. The rest of us would take our chances with every bite or drink, if we could afford to buy anything. Scavenging and begging would become a way of life for millions.
Likewise, health care would only be affordable for the very wealthy. With no government assistance, no government health programs, illness and disease would explode into pandemics. The wealthy would simply cut themselves off from the general population, as plague raged across the land.
As you can see, very quickly this model collapses in on itself. Unregulated capitalism eventually eats itself alive. But before that happens, billions, trillions of dollars are to be made by the greatest pirates the world has ever known: corporate pirates!
This is the "free market," recipe for utter disaster if it could ever come to fruition. A "free market" would quickly tear the goose that laid the golden eggs to pieces
Little by little, over the past 30 years, CorpCons have managed to slip us ever further in the direction of their slimy wet dream. Since Reagan, the mantra that "government is not the solution; it is the problem," has become an accepted axiom. According to this philosophy, the answer to this "problem" of government is the "free market." This axiom has been shrilly pounded, ad nauseum, by conservatives for decades, and millions upon millions of people believe it. As the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, correctly realized, "people will believe anything if it is repeated often enough."
This has been the tactic by the very richest to gain support for their nefarious intentions to cripple the one and only force that can control them: a government of We the People.
Indeed, the proof is in the pudding. Since Reagan, this coddling of the rich, this release of the "free market" kraken has had 30 years to produce the results that CorpCons perpetually promise: great wealth that would "trickle down" to everyone, jobs galore, an ever-improving quality of life for all. That has not happened. For three decades, taxes have been slashed for the richest Americans. Deregulation has swept across government, dramatically loosening safeguards in sector after sector. Competent government regulators have been replaced, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, by capitalist wolves supposedly protecting the henhouse. So the "free market" ethos has been applied to an extent that would have stunned and dismayed those who crafted the New Deal pathway out of the Great Depression.
And this same formula has been applied not just in America, but around the world, as other countries followed our lead in dismantling many of the regulations, protections and higher taxes on the wealthy that existed prior to the "Reagan Revolution."
What has actually happened is the reverse of what conservative "free marketers" promised. Real wages and earning power of average American families have stalled or gone backwards. Prices for most things have zoomed upwards to the point where decent housing, good health care and higher education are beyond the means of upwards of half of the country. For the first time in American history, vast portions of the American people face the prospect of a lower quality of life for their children. This is the result of the low, low taxes and the deregulation of the "free market" that has swept this nation. Imagine how much worse it would be for most of us - and how much more glorious for the rich - if the market were even "freer."
How much further do we have to go down this awful road of coddling the rich and corporations before the people stand up and fight for themselves? Instead of a "free market," workers, consumers, citizens should be demanding a "fair market." A fair market takes care of its workers, consumers and communities FIRST, and the profit of any corporation comes second.
Only a "fair market," can sustain. A "free market" will eventually consume itself. And that is what we see happening in America as jobs are sent overseas, rich capitalists hide their wealth overseas, manufacturing collapses, the tax base shrinks, infrastructure crumbles, crime soars. The community is systematically manipulated, exploited, and then destroyed by predatory capitalism.
Unrestrained capitalism, what CorpCons call the "free market" is the greatest threat to America.
Thomas Jefferson hit the nail on the head when he stated that banks were more dangerous than armies, and "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country."
The "moneyed corporations" are doing more than just challenging our government to a trial of strength, more than bidding defiance to the laws of our country, they are grabbing for control, and consolidating their hold. The end-game of this trend is Fascism: where corporate power completely controls the government, and can then demand of the people what they will. When that happens We the People will be crushed. The labor movement, small businesses, local communities, freedom itself will be expunged.
You think it can't happen? Well then continue to buy into the conservative myth of the "Free Market" and watch the kraken rise."
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