Explaining why free market capitalism is a fraudulent belief system gets tiring after a while. It's like explaining to a fundamentalist that God didn't create the earth 6000 years ago.
Nevertheless, the message bears repeating because of the havoc this insane ideology has wreaked on modern society.
If you listen to what Glenn Beck and his cohorts say over at Fox Noise, you'd think there was a great battle between good and evil - trusty old American capitalism and evil Black Muslim/European/Russian socialism. The logic goes something like this: Republican leaders talk about the free market, so therefore it must exist and it must be good. Democrats talk about the need for government to intervene where the market fails, so therefore it must be evil and they must be communists.
It's childishly silly, but it passes for serious debate in main stream media circles. Free Market goons like David Frum (supposedly a serious Republican) do the media circuits whipping up fear over deficits and 'out of control' public spending programs by the Democrats. This meme is spread into our political culture like a virus, passed on by an army of militants determined to ensure their failed ideas live on forever.
The truth about the free market is simple: It doesn't exist, and has never existed. At least not in advanced industrial nations.
All powerful western economies arose through a mixture of extreme protectionism and socialized risk. Governments funded key industries with tax payers money in their embryonic years when the market would have destroyed them. Virtually every key industry in America has been funded, bailed out or protected by the federal government at some point (think cars, planes, farming, the internet, Wall St for starters). If competition from abroad is too fierce, western governments do one of two things: 1. They protect their own industries through tax subsidies, direct funding or low interest loans. 2. They destroy the competing industry in the offending country either through direct force or 'regime change' (think Britain vs India in the cotton trade).
The notion that a complex and diverse economy like the United States could have arisen or survive without massive government planning and intervention is ludicrous beyond belief. America, like all other powerful economies, has religiously avoided the rules laid out by free market capitalism and done rather nicely.
So why do performing clowns like Glenn Beck and supposedly intelligent Republicans like David Frum keep talking about this much revered ideology when it is so clearly a steaming pile of nonsense?
The answer is fairly simple.
Powerful industries control the political and media classes in America. As a result, opinion that survives within this culture are highly skewed in favor of its owners. The big industries in America (Wall St, the oil companies and military tech companies) want to have their cake and eat it. When times are good, they want tax breaks, lax regulation and as little interference from the government as possible. When times are bad, they want an unlimited supply of tax payers money to keep the afloat. Therefore, it is important that there is some sort of intellectual justification to explain it. Glenn Beck gets paid millions by the Murdoch empire to do capitalism's bidding mostly because it pays big dividends. By keeping the focus on welfare mothers and poor black people, public resentment builds for government programs that help the poor, yet keep them oblivious to the trillions of dollars being paid out to the richest people in the country.
This trick has been going on for decades and the results are becoming clearer and clearer. The members of the latest incarnation of the Tea Party were not to be seen when the Bush Administration was funneling billions of dollars into the banking system, yet when a man with parkinsons disease asks the government to regulate the insurance industry that has denied him coverage, all hell breaks loose.
The level of intellectual disconnect is extraordinary, yet an entire industry thrives on its survival.
I've written about this topic many times before, and I will continue to do so for as long as I can. It gets wearing at points, but the stakes are too high to do otherwise.
