Tom Harker
There is no “Free” Market. It is restricted in ways that even Libertarians favor. “Entrepreneurs” are restricted from creating opium dens and – except in Nevada – opening brothels. We have zoning laws, too, but few call them “tyrannical governmental intrusion into the Free Market.”
No, that phrase is more often directed at safety regulations in mines and workplaces. Social Security and Medicare are governmental intrusion; they must be privatized. Progressive taxation which asks the more able to pay more than the less able perverts the Magic Market.
On the other hand, shifting taxes to the poor and middle class, increasing profits for the wealthy, is the way God and the omnipotent Market want it. “Freedom” is what certain selfish people say it is. As hotel magnate Leona Helmsley said, “Taxes are for the little people.” Prison is for the little people, too, as are poverty, dead-end jobs and lack of medical care; The Market provides all of that to the Little People for free.
The concept of “freedom” held by those singing hymns to the Market is strange indeed; it’s similar to the “freedom” of the Feudal age; the freedom of the few to live in relative luxury, imbued with superior authority and legal rights while most of the rest serve as peasants, enriching the Lords and at their mercy.
The Lords of wealth have bought the State Houses and the Congress and the Supreme Court, all of which shamelessly have worked to destroy unions, restrict voting rights and control the media. They demand “freedom” for themselves and their magic Market, but their freedom is at best license, and at worst tyranny.
Oh, they hate regulations – ones that affect their behavior. But they love regulations – insist on regulations – that help them control the “Free” Market in ways beneficial to themselves. They want to keep “their” money in their wallets; they don’t like “their” money going to taxes that help lazy peasants. And although it is overwhelmingly obvious that the Manor Lord’s money is really the result of the Peasants’ labor; although it is overwhelmingly obvious that the Lord’s money is the Peasants’ money, the stating of this obvious fact is heretical here in today’s Matrix.
What are you, a Communist? You must hate America. Well, here’s what a well-known “communist” said: “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” – Abraham Lincoln.
You may have been shocked by that. How could Lincoln have said such a thing? Well, he said it because it’s the truth and he was Honest Abe. In spite of this truth, the Manor Lords’ flunky politicians have gradually but inexorably moved to emasculate unions and reduce the individual worker to the level of a totally dependent peasant. Ironically, they claim that anything designed to free workers from their dependency upon the economic aristocracy actually ensures their dependency.
The “Magic” of the Market is magic baloney. The Market is supposedly “supply and demand,” but much of it is rigged. Diamonds used for jewelry, for example, are little or no better than cubic zirconia, but advertising sells diamonds based on class and artificial scarcity; cubic zirconia is for the little people.
The paid, political flunkies of the Military-Industrial Complex create constant and excessive, artificial “demand” for growing the already largest military juggernaut in the world. The same flunkies work to manipulate the labor supply so as to keep wages down. They tell their supporters they despise Mexican immigrants while they quietly encourage as many “illegals” as possible to cross the border and be exploited. They further manipulate the Labor Market by undermining unions, encouraging immigration by foreigners educated in expensive professions, and by facilitating the “off-shoring” of jobs to foreign countries.
The point of the “Free Market” is to let those who own the country run the country. And it doesn’t have an “Invisible Hand”: it’s a finger.
This article originally appeared on The Pickaway News Journal
