The Economy and the Myth of the Free Market

In my opinion, I hate to break it to those Libertarians and far, far right wingers, but the answer to reinstituting capitalism and a competitive free market economy in which the American citizens were to be the beneficiaries is not simply in "hands off" governmental policies or deregulation of these now large national and international corporate concerns now operating in this country.The Libertarian and far, far right wing mindset continues to tout that if the government would not overly-regulate or control corporate entities prices would be lower, and American ingenuity would reign in this country once more. Their argument continues that the courts are there if there are any disputes or citizen complaints in the event these entities fail to live up to their marketing ploys, and accessible to the citizens for redress of any grievances they might have with them. I don't feel at this point in our history it is as simple as that. I don't know if you have ever been involved in a case where you are fighting a corporate entity, or the stamina and costs it takes to even use our state or federal courts anymore, not to mention even attempt to find an ethical attorney to represent you since most law firms are now "corporately" owned.

This answer may have been true if way back when the U.S. Supreme Court again hadn't overstepped it's boundaries in redefining the Constitution, and progressively over the years first creatively inventing another entity to the Constitution, "corporate personhoods," and then progressively giving them equal and even greater privileges and immunities and First Amendment protections than the actual "legal" personhoods, U.S. citizens. This is even more true on the state levels, where a new type of corporation has been allowed to do business in most states throughout the nation, the "LLP," or Limited Liability Partnership. How you can be allowed to incorporate, and then attempt to essentially "limit your liability" to others through the corporate structure to begin with, is truly a mystery to me. Now we are attempting to bypass personal accountability and responsibility by hiding behind a sham corporate structure. And the states are allowing this, both through the state legislature and unequal privileges now given them, and then also through that other now political check and balance, errant judicial rulings upholding these corporate structure's "protections" and the state statutes affording them these illegal no mea culpa "umbrellas."What is needed is removal of that creative phantom entity given First Amendment rights, and also breaking up the monopolies and associations that then sprung up once they were given "freedom of association." It is the Association of Realtors, Insurers, Home Builders,Banks,Bar and Medical which are dictating market place pricing - and woe to the independent entrepreneur that takes on these giants or attempts to fairly price their product or willingly reduce their profit margins to reasonable levels and undercut them.I don't know what planet the Libertarians have been living on the last few decades, but much more needs to be done than simple deregulation of some of our major industries if we ever truly want to have a free market again. The monopoly problem, "corporate personhoods," and price fixing due to Bill of Rights "association" also needs to be tackled, before our economy can once again recover. Now, those laws and "privileges" are making more and more Americans homeless, as is what is now occurring in the banking and real estate "monopolies." Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, after all, according to some reports, backed and held over 80% of the mortgage market in this country, in one form or another, whether by directly financing those loans, or indirectly through other banking institutions.

And finally, in order to protect American jobs, products and labor, tax the hell out of the foreign and global concerns doing business in this country. Trade agreements, and such taxes actually were to be the primarary source of the federal government's administrative costs and needs, not the labors of the natural and naturalized citizens at all. Wasn't that why the War of '76 was fought to begin with and the Constitution's intent - not to directly tax American labor, but to instead tax foreign products and labor, and indirectly tax the domestic products of those labors, which then would make domestically produced items more economically than foreign imports, thus protecting the AMERICAN economy (instead of our leaders now more concerned, it appears, with the global economy - not their job at all).