Where is the "Free Market" I've heard the capitalist reactionaries screaming about?

Question

bush freezes interest rates in the subprime market for the next five years to prevent more financial losses for the predatory lenders.

How is that "free market?"

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,315332,00.html

To Funkyjed: You are wrong. "Free market" is also about the financial workplace. Mortgage loans are bought and sold, too. Mortgage loans are "goods and services."


A free market is a market in which prices of goods and services are arranged completely by the mutual non-coerced consent of sellers and buyers, determined generally by the natural law of supply and demand. In a competitive free market environment, buyers and sellers by definition do not coerce or mislead each other

…a free market economy is "an economic system in which individuals, rather than government, make the majority of decisions regarding economic activities and transactions."[

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market

Answer 1

You’re absolutely correct. Despite how much neoconservatives and Republicans of all stripes tout the greatness of the free market, their actions in government belie their supposed faith in unregulated capitalism. After all if they believed that privatization was the key to everything, and betters efficiency, then shouldn’t the secret service, homeland security, and every other government program be farmed out to private firms?

Speaking of which, even in the areas, where our government, especially under this administration, has divvied out jobs to private firms that were previously done by our military - such as providing security to diplomats, taking care of food services for our troops, etc. – the free market is not exercised in any manner that can be truly called “FREE”. In every aspect of the selection process for contractors, it isn’t the cheapest or most efficient contractor that gets the jobs in Iraq, which is what would happen under a truly free market system, but it is the contractor that has ties to the Bush administration that wins the bid.

There is nothing FREE about the free market, under this administration, and thus Bush and his cohorts have betrayed the very spirit of conservatism, which is laissez faire at its core with regards to fiscal policy. The fundamental paradox about conservatives is that they demean the efficiency of the government, extol limited, smaller, or no government control at all to be an ideal state, and yet they all want to attain a government position, and invariably they expand government initiatives while there. The truth is these so called conservatives, aren’t really for smaller government, they are just for smaller government in areas they don’t care about – you know assisting the poor, giving kids better education, giving equal access to quality healthcare, and providing aid to down trodden nations . When it comes to their own pet initiatives, where their profits and pocket books are at stake, they are all for big government. People used to think that fiscal conservatism was the most sacrosanct platform that Republicans should run on. In truth their only platform is hypocrisy.

Answer 2

The airline bailout was used to prevent gigantic lawsuits, you know, those frivolous suits where people want something for nothing. The bank bailout was to protect the mortgage lenders, many of them foreign banks, whom we depend upon for investment lest we go belly-up, which we stand a good chance of doing if China calls in our loans. At the moment, we are having trouble paying the interest on these loans, let alone the staggering principle.

If Bush had decided to help the homeowners, it would have helped BOTH the mortgage lenders and the mortgage holders. But we all know the philosophy....those fools bought more than they could afford, so they deserve their fate. Forget about the job losses, the inflationary payments, etc., in the minds of the Conservatives, the homeowners deserve no pity. They will help banks, but people.....oh, no!

There is no free market. There is Corporate Greed and a President who helps his buddies, gives these inept fools jobs in his federal departments, ignores the needs of the people, and protects the huge Corporations who financed his career.

Vote him out! Vote him out, and send every one of his Conservative millionaire legislative Yesmen with him!

Answer 3

The expression "Free Market" is an oxymoron. If it is free, it's not a market, If it is a market, it is not free.

When the repubs talk about free markets, what they mean is ignoring the laws against corrupt business practices. They want more police and more jails, and they want to prosecute individuals for what they do in the privacy of their own homes, but corporate flim flam artists are given a free pass.

Do you remember a time when there were laws enforcing truth in advertising? We would have traveling medicine men if it didn't pose a threat to giant pharmaceuticals. Oops, I spoke too soon, they advertise on late night television promise to enlarge things.

Answer 4

I've often asked that question myself. Subsidies, bailouts, anti-competitive laws, a Justice Department that hasn't won an Anti-trust case in 12 years and hasn't prosecuted a price fixing case in nearly 20, an FCC that restricts competition by favoring the concentration of media, the Texas law against "libelling" beef, "Free Trade" agreements that allow foreign countries to exclude US products from their markets --how do any of these support a Free Market?

Republicans and their Big Business Bankrollers wouldn't know a Free Market if it bit them on the ***. And it will if it ever gets the chance.

Answer 5

Well that has nothing to do with the free market - which is a open and tariff free trade system.

However the powers that be were supported by the large corporations and so - forth and will always be willing to give back to them.

Answer 6

A free market by definition is with out Government control.

Answer 7

there is no free market in the U.S.

the republicans can say there is a free market as many times as they want...


but with moves like freezing the interest rates... and government bailout programs (like the ones the airlines used) and as long as there is legislation and laws that are written to HELP corporations... the companies are using processes other than the marketplace to set prices and make profit.

laws that help companies HURT the market as much as laws that hurt companies.

Answer 8

You are 100% right. This bill is like the bank bail outs of the 1980's under "the Greatest American President" R. Reagan.

Bush is not looking out for homeowners. He is bailing out his base - Multibillion dollar International Corporations and their million dollar executive officers and boards.

Answer 9

What I'd like to know is how the capitalist reactionaries reason that capitalism = free.

Oh, never mind. I forgot... It IS free- free for the rich and big business. Sorry, I must have had a brain fart.

Answer 10

Why is market intervention only socialist when it protects the proletariat and not when it protects big business?

Ironically, where we are headed economically is precisely what Marx writes about as a system that will encourage socialist uprising from the proletariat as we lose buying power and become more disenfranchised.