The next time someone confuses corporatism with “the free market,” like Jacob Weisberg in his latest Slate column, I’m not going to be able to contain my anger. Just because the Republican Party clothes itself in the economic rhetoric of government non-interference does not mean it actually, y’know, brings about government non-interference.
To analogize libertarian economic principles to “Sarah Palin’s view of global warming” is so thoroughly mind-blowing that I don’t even know where to start. It is the government’s encouragement for everyone to get a mortgage that led us here, combined with — sure, I’ll admit it — corporate malfeasance. Maybe, if executed properly, there is a role for the SEC or some other public entity to rate bonds to ensure that junk backed by subprime mortgages isn’t rated AAA. (On the other hand,
as some have suggested, maybe we need to eliminate bond ratings to force investors to actually read what they’re buying.) You can’t tell me, though, that this is a wholesale repudiation of the free market.
The free market does not exist — not with the sheer volume of rent-seeking activity in this country, something which will only increase. How is it intellectually valid for failures of government to justify the need for more government?
In other news: Really, Boston? Again? In any event, no matter who advances tonight, I was lucky enough to win the Phillies’ lottery for Game 4 World Series tickets, so I will be in Citizens Bank Park on Sunday night. Madness.
