Before I start, two critical points must be made to those of you that have never studied history or economics: Free markets don’t exist, and the middle class is a creation of government through the government’s involvement in the marketplace.
Calling our economy a free market economy is illogical. It makes no sense because it is in no way a free market. It is equivalent to the church’s doctrine that the Earth was the center of the solar system. We now know how utterly stupid that belief – yes, belief, for it had no credible basis – was, and presently, we are discovering that the same is true in our economy.
What do we have then? We have a market created by our government. Government usually provides the currency, although in our case, a group of private bankers called the Federal Reserve provides the currency. Government provides the legal network and courts to enforce the agreements that make markets a possibility. Government provides education through the public education system and transportation on public roads, rails and airways. “Free market” businesses are defended by police and fire departments supplied by the government.
Even more importantly, one must admit that the rules of this business game are defined by our government. Like sports, business does not work without rules – rules that our government makes.
So, when I listen to someone say something like, “Let the market decide,” or when I listen to them talk about our supposed free market in America, I can’t help but laugh. There is no market without government rules. One of the biggest balloons (yes, this is my attempt at an economic pun) is this idea that the United States is by some means the model of a free market. It’s not, not at all. If that didn’t become completely clear to you after our $800-plus billion “relief” followed by a $700 billion endowment to the crooked, I don’t know what else I can say.
How then can you honestly say or, more importantly, believe that letting the “market decide” and complete deregulation (whatever that means) will help the middle class? Really, the question does not even make sense, because it is not at all possible. Statements like that really just mean, “Let’s stop big business from having to protect workers and constructing a middle class. Instead, why don’t we just let them decide for themselves how much to pay us, how to guarantee our safety and how to gauge the supply and demand.”
A middle class has never been the expected result of allowing corporations to do as they wish. “Free markets” do not produce a middle class. They produce, instead, a miniscule, extremely powerful affluent class, a small middle merchant class and a mammoth and horrified worker class of serfs.
If I ask any of you about communism, almost all of you will say something to the likes of the following: “It is a good idea ideologically. It just doesn’t work practically, because humans are selfish and lazy by nature.” And of course you would be absolutely correct. But why don’t you realize it is the same for your so-called free market economy? Free market is like communism, just an idea. We don’t really practice it. Without any kind of regulation, it cannot work, because like you said, humans are selfish and lazy by nature.
The Soviet Union did not really practice communism. We don’t really practice free market capitalism. If we don’t realize some of these things and instead demand concise, effective regulation, this economic freefall will only worsen. And for some of you, that will mean a clear-cut path to serfdom.
Julio Cespedes is a junior majoring in biological engineering. He can be contacted at [email protected]