FREE MARKETS - THE BIGGEST CON-TRICK EVER.

28^th May 2012.

Moral philosopher Michael Sandel, (Havard, Oxford, Rhodes Scholar) interviewed by Guardian journalist Decca Aitkenhead, led her to ruminating on the magical and mystical powers of Free Markets.

Freedom must be exercised by responsible mature evolved human beings – or it turns into anarchic chaos. Since Milton Freidman, after 40 years of half-baked experiments with “free markets” and “monetarism” – we must surely have identified the theory’s grossest stupidities.

The world constantly hovers on the brink of economic collapse, while top executives gouge out obscene “rewards” tax-free to hide off-shore. The City of London “lost” more than £1 trillion. Wall Street “lost” ten times as much. (Pssst… They actually hid it off-shore). No global agency knows which banks owe what to whom or when; despite the world’s amazing computers there is no daily balance sheet maintained. “They” clearly cannot count very well. Peasants sell their own body parts to the rich. Grossly polluting, allegedly profitable “Free Market” multiple-competition buses jamming narrow streets in Oxford and London, UK, have sacked on-board conductors, so drivers take fares at every bus-stop, tripling journey times for passengers and creating gridlock for all road users. 47 million Americans need food stamps – the free US markets cannot feed them; 35 million US families have no health care, and thousands of US homes are boarded up by the banks (which cannot count) insanely consigning families to tent cities. The US infrastructure is crumbling. The income gap has never been higher; careless, contemptible aristocracy has ballooned while millions descend into the hell of persistent below living-wage earnings, proving there is no free-market at the top (who will offer to do Bob Diamond’s job for a fifth of his “rewards”?). Monopolistic corporations, selling water, air, metals, telecoms, weapons, food, energy, finance and drugs transcend borders and democratic controls, protected by the tax-payers they rip-off, as too big to fail. Up to 50% of young, educated people have no job prospects – a recipe for violence and crime.  

Our leaders are simply too damn lazy to think ahead. Would you trust them to build a plane or plant our crops or plan a surgical procedure? We need to apply science to planning human affairs. We must dismiss and eradicate at all levels belief in fairy-tale secret mechanisms that operate magically to set wages, prices and commodities. Our leaders need to realise there are no fairy shoe-makers who work while we all sleep to do their jobs and organise our world. Those silly ideas are just a load of old cobblers; a massive con-trick by the 1% of gangsters to exploit the 99% of honest workers.    

Its time to grow up!

http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/5_per_annum_cap_on_all_interest_rates_charges/