Wanted: Free-Market Mouthpieces

For my entire adult life, I have watched free-market fundamentalists do their thing. They demonize government, run for government, capture government, then dismantle and privatize government. Usually, but not always, they are called Republicans. Sometimes not, because the philosophy of laissez-faire capitalism is sold, even to Democrats, as the engine of economic well-being. Since jobless voters don't like incumbents of either party, it was for decades presumed that to be skeptical of the almighty free market was to mess with your political career.

No longer. As popular as it once was, the fundamentalist philosophy lies today in ruins. The idea that government has no legitimate role in markets has failed, noisily, expensively and in full view of everybody. To paraphrase the Stetsoned balladeer: the free market ain't free at all.

It's not free to compete. Competition means a winner and a loser -- and banks can't lose as long as they're big enough.

It's not free to set prices. Health insurance corporations have uniformly bled the public dry using their antitrust exemption. Financial bubbles distort prices terribly.

It doesn't provide jobs or economic well-being. It provides 10.2% unemployment, skyrocketing foreclosure rates, falling wages and plummeting standards of living for the vast majority.

It doesn't provide economic growth for working families. It provides rising costs, predatory consumer interest rates and popped-bubble home prices.

Worship of unregulated capitalism is as discredited as the science of eugenics. As bankrupt as Lehman Brothers.

Which is why its persistence as a world view needs my help to continue.

Yes, my help. In my career, I do communications work for non-profit charitable groups and small businesses. I learn of opportunities to do writing of various kinds from a range of places. One is a service aimed at freelancers. Here's a listing that came across my screen the other day:

Freelance Oped Ghostwriter Publication or Company: DC-based public relations agency Industry: Newspapers, Public Relations Salary: Negotiable Benefits: Flexible Hours, Telecommute Policy Job Duration: Freelance/Project Basis Job Location: Washington, DC USA Job Requirements: We are seeking someone to ghostwrite oped columns for our clients. We get between 1-8 such jobs per month. Ideal candidate can come up to speed quickly on any subject, is intimately familiar with public policy and political current events, is comfortable writing from a free-market perspective, can research independently, and is experienced writing opeds.

Fees are per project. Please send two writing samples that reflect an ability to make persuasive arguments substantiated by facts and research. Opeds are preferred. We're interested in seeing your raw copy -- and not necessarily published pieces that have been edited by others.

Send two samples [...] by email to [e-mail].

(For those not familiar with the freelance writing biz, an op-ed is an Opinion Editorial, not unlike the one you're reading right now - except this is me writing it. Ghostwriting is when a writer writes a piece with the agreement that someone else will put his name on the byline, buying the ghostwriter's silence.)

So. Some free-market think tank or business association / publication needs ghostwriters. I guess that means those opinion-shaping pro-business, deregulatory editorials we read in newspapers and websites don't write themselves - they farm out the work. And they'd like me to try my hand inside a high-profile name.

Well, heck, I can do that. I've read enough howling nonsense from AEI or the Heritage Foundation or Cato to know the drill:

Put 900 words together on some kind of social problem or legislation. Whatever the problem is, never, ever, ever is it the private sector's fault. Blame government. Blame consumers. Blame unions. Blame regulation. Blame employees. Blame elitists. Blame lawsuits. Blame liberals. Consider blaming Mexicans. No matter what the problem is, the solution is to cut taxes. Throw in a couple of quotes from the Manhattan Institute, cite Friedman or Hayek, harrumph about "moral hazard" and call it a day.

The satirist in me is in awe of the comedy here. This is a job posting that calls for dozens of columns advocating the exact thinking that led to today's specific economic disaster. It's like the captain of the Titanic asking you to brush up his resume while you're floating on a lifeboat or clinging to floating debris. "Excellent at identifying seaborne obstacles, including icebergs."

More deeply, it shows a real mechanism behind the tragedy of the last thirty years. Letting free-market fundamentalism run things has meant legitimizing it constantly despite much evidence - 2007-2009 only being the latest and greatest example - it is cancer to the public interest.

The shaping of public opinion has played a central role in convincing the public to act against its own economic interests. When it comes to business and foreign policy, op-eds are the cornerstone of that shaping effort.

Press releases and traditional advertising from private industry can't do it alone. Monstrous campaign contributions can't do it alone. Holding the public's employment and standard of living hostage won't do it either. Promoting such a terrible, discredited idea as unregulated corporate capitalism absolutely needs miles of column inches from public thinkers who advocate for the public what only business interests want.

Now that deregulation ideology has crashed and burned, taking with it our jobs, our vacations, our options and our opportunity, Congress is struggling once again, as it did in the 1930s, to put the reins back on the stampeding elephant before it wipes us all out.

Under these conditions, where can the free-market fundies go for those column inches?

It's got to be pretty dire if they're knocking on my door.

 

Follow Rob Warmowski on Twitter: www.twitter.com/warmowski

Comments

[ElementalPraxis]

"Health insurance corporations have uniformly bled the public dry using their antitrust exemption."

Why would an industry operating in a free market ever need an antitrust exemption?

There is no free market in health insurance. There's a trust. A cartel that gobbles up government subsidies and engages in price-fixing and collusion. No free market there. If there was a free market in health insurance, you'd have a 'Wal-Mart' brand of health insurance that aggressively forced suppliers of health care to cut costs. There's no such thing.

"Now that deregulation ideology has crashed and burned, taking with it our jobs, our vacations, our options and our opportunity"

Globalization, a hellchild spawned by both corrupt bribe-soaked phony parties, sent the jobs overseas. Wall Street and the multinational corporations and traitors from both controlled parties collaborated every step of the way. Capital was regulated into dominance, allowed to dominate humans because government cleared all the obstacles.

Wall Street liberals praised globalization during the bubble years. The myth of globalization is now trashed, and now there's a new phony liberal myth to explain why it's killing economies: that government took a hands off approach to globalization.

Big Government was the Father of globalized capital and Big Business was the Mother of globalized capital. The harvesting of wealth for the ruling financial class and the transfer of America's productive capacity could not have happened without a Government/Business partnership breaking all the ice in the path of the theft.

[S1m0n]

"For my entire adult life, I have watched free-market fundamentalists do their thing. ..."

A-Flipping Men! The utter inanity with which the conservatives worshipped Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' metaphor (their understanding of Smith being all of two words deep) and the sanctimony with which they preached it has always astounded me.

[ElementalPraxis]

The modern conservative stance on the relationship between governments and markets is also a fraud. If 'free-market fundamentalists' are 'doing their thing', the results don't show it. Despite what is alleged, the government is not being 'dismantled'. Far from it.

The US federal government spent 20% of US GDP in 1948, 30% by 1961, 35% by 1989, and 45.34% in 2009.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html

There are more federal agencies than ever, and the federal government redistributes more wealth than ever- upwards.

Big Government is far too valuable an ally for Big Business to ever be dismantled. Big Government is purchased, compromised, enlarged, and then crafted into a weapon of Big Business that is used to spy on and punish competitors. Big Government harvests wealth for corporations and transfers it in the form of contracts and subsidies. Big Government enforces market discipline in favor of the insiders' club.

The most powerful corporation in the country, the Federal Reserve, would not rotate emissaries from Goldman and the rest of the banking cartel into government offices if this did not pay dividends. Government is a subsidiary of Big Business; it's essential for the management of crony capitalism that government be large, powerful and feared.

Government is the club that the oligarchy uses to guard their empire from the rabble. The solution to the failures of our current centrally-planned economy is not to make it more communist, because that just means making it more totalitarian.

[therealredstateblues]

"Put 900 words together on some kind of social problem or legislation. Whatever the problem is, never, ever, ever is it the private sector's fault. Blame government. Blame consumers. Blame unions. Blame regulation. Blame employees. Blame elitists. Blame lawsuits. Blame liberals. Consider blaming Mexicans. No matter what the problem is, the solution is to cut taxes. Throw in a couple of quotes from the Manhattan Institute, cite Friedman or Hayek, harrumph about "moral hazard" and call it a day."

you got the think tank formula down pat, Rob you're hired!!

the product of these think tanks is not much different than the one I produce when I sit on my own "think" tank every morning 8-)

[Realization]

Yes Americans have been fed some amazingly stupid trash. But it's not over yet. Volume counts and builds up over time. And there is the point that in Washington name recognition trumps actually have a record of being right. And in America, the economics profession, aided by the media, has done tremendous damage. Economic theories and models only work if they have good input and most don't.

Unfortunately common sense has been thrown out the window for sophisticated junk. In countries that are being successful these days, economics is in a way less advanced - and more realistic. Besides, academic economists are not at the center of decision making. They are kept in closets and pulled out when needed.

And we have the added problem of thinking the military is national security when, in fact, ours is overextended, a cost, and a negative factor since it is far out of proportion to threats and gets in the way of economic and industrial recovery (the military is one reason we have been soft on Japan and Korea on trade, one of many).

To get back on track we have to simply decide to eliminate trade deficits and rejuvenate American manufacturing and tech doing whatever it takes. That means benchmarking what others do and adapting to the tactical and strategic environments.

Obama is in Japan now talking defense. Big mistake. It is an economic relationship and has been one sided in their favor for generations. Time for equality - for us.

[therealredstateblues]

Very well put Realization