Friday, April 30, 2010

Are we finally seeing the last gasps of "Free Market" madness?

One would certainly like to think so.  But the defenders of the Predator Classes seem impervious to reality.  No matter how wrong their "theories" may be, they still keep banging them out.
Unfree Markets: The Last Gasp of a (Literally) Bankrupt Ideology
RJ Eskow
April 29, 2010 - 11:12am
What we've been witnessing in Washington isn't just political positioning by one party looking to deny the other a victory, although it's certainly that. We're also seeing the death struggle of a dying ideology. This ideology provided intellectual cover to business and political elites for decades, but events have proved conclusively that it doesn't work. What's more, people are beginning to see that it's inconsistent with the country's traditional values of competition and free enterprise.
The ideology was cooked up in think tanks and boardrooms, then packaged and sold under a variety of conservative and libertarian guises. While the theories and rationalizations varied wildly, the conclusions were always the same: Deregulation was always the right approach, even (especially) for the most concentrated and rapacious businesses. Consumer regulations should be avoided because they hurt everybody, especially (somehow) consumers. And cutting taxes for the rich magically made things better for everybody else. more

No comments:

Post a Comment