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Community Corner

The Problem with a Free Market

Free markets only mimic the brutality we've struggled against for thousands of years.

I have strong opinions about things. A lot of them, actually, but I rarely find it useful to disparage an opposing argument because it’s strategically unsound.

I’ve written several times in this column about how there’s plenty of research to support the idea that when people of opposite opinions start barking at each other, it tends to galvanize each position.

When left and right start bickering, it drives the left left, and the right right, and the middle gets smaller and smaller. Still, sometimes it’s really difficult to maintain that composure.

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I’m finding it difficult, in fact, right now.

Earlier this week, Gov. Jerry Brown paid a visit to Los Alamitos to rally for the voters’ ability to decide whether the state should extend its temporary tax increases this June. Republicans in the state Legislature have been blocking the measure, with most news outlets reporting that they have presented some 53 demands, which include such wonderful euphemisms as “streamlining business regulations.”

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Leaving aside very reasonable arguments that the state should live within its means, and that deficit spending has long-term consequences, it is beyond comprehension that people are still blaming government regulation and taxes for the depressed economy.

Government regulation.

Taxes.

Does anyone buying this snake oil watch sports?

The Chicago School of Economics and its neocon parrots believe wholeheartedly in the market’s ability to regulate itself. You know, the invisible hand that guides rational consumers in their quest to maximize their self-interest.

Look, my calculus is rusty, and I haven’t done much with game theory beyond simple matrixes, but I’m all for mathematical rigor. I’m not going to criticize the wisdom of using mathematical formulas to model the deeply irrational behavior of human beings—though many, many economists and mathematicians have.

I just have a simple question. When has a self-regulating game ever, in the history of the world, produced an equitable game?

And, yes, I am absolutely in favor of an equitable game. Redistribute the wealth. Spread it around. Not to achieve an egalitarian system—that’s a fantasy—but to maintain a fair one.

Imagine a sport, any sport mind you, without referees. Football. Basketball. Hockey. Rhythmic gymnastics. What do you think those sports would look like without referees? Without regulation? 

How can anyone who has made it any distance on this planet honestly argue that a deregulated capitalist system will produce anything but a vast and brutal arrangement?

Look, the universe is a callous place. Stars explode. Rocks slam into planets and wipe out entire species. And the only compassion thus far located in that vast emptiness is human. 

We take care of the sick. We bury the dead. We even have a profession whose sole purpose is the preservation of other animals—the veterinarian. Fairness is something that has to be fought for perpetually. 

There is no rest stop. There is no putting down that work.

Deregulation should be called what it is—dehumanization.

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