The Religion of the Unfettered Free Market

The illusion being sold to us by those who are trying at every turn to dismantle social security, unemployment insurance, public assistance to the poor, health care safety-nets, public education, worker-rights guarantees, regulations to protect food safety, the environment, worker safety etc….. they are trying to convince people that there is somehow an objective, invisible system in equilibrium (“the market”) that will automatically take care of everything if we would just leave it to its own automatic forces.  This illusion presumes that the bankers, the financiers, the corporate owners, are like the high priests of this sacred system, not interfering with it but only seeing that it is working without interference or interruption.  In this fantasy, when those who find themselves suffering because of this so-called ‘free market’ system begin to develop tools of collective power to assert their rights, their dignity, their interests, the high priests try to convince the rest of us that those citizens are going to ruin a good thing for us all by interfering with the supposedly otherwise ‘natural’ workings of the system.

Prices, wages, salaries, bonuses don’t automatically go up or down simply by some invisible hand over which no human being has control (or responsibility).  Corporate managers, financiers, business owners too have choices as to how they will respond to “market forces” in balance to consumer needs, consumer protections, environmental responsibility, economic justice.  People like the owner of Papa John’s or Whole Foods want us to believe for example, that because they will have to provide health insurance options to their workers, they “HAVE” to cut back hours so that they can avoid this requirement and can maintain their balance in the natural order of the market system.  NO… they have a choice… how much profit is enough for THEM, relative to how well or poorly they treat their employees.  In the Whole Foods case it is more than ironic that here we have a company that builds its corporate aura on the premise that people can and should be given options as to how they eat, what they eat, how they choose consumer products for their positive (or negative) impact on the world and on themselves--- cultivating an aura of “social responsibility” and “personal wellness,”  …until it comes to paying their employees well and making sure they can get health care.

The illusion of the “unfettered free market” is as bad as any other unexamined ideology or blind religion, being sold to people not really for their own benefit, but to protect the interests of those who are “in charge.”