tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9263167.post1761014814680008109..comments2024-03-28T15:17:43.056-04:00Comments on Stayin' Alive: World of IllusionCervanteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11302076828795198187noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9263167.post-73863186256233955472010-11-25T12:34:40.411-05:002010-11-25T12:34:40.411-05:00“Free market” ideology or religion is a construct ...“Free market” ideology or religion is a construct that was explicitly set up (perhaps not consciously so by some of the original theorists, it is easy to go spinning off into silly schemas when you expect your audience to listen of be admiring) to favor those in power. Market relations - in the simplest sense of an exchange of goods, or goods / services / other contracts for money, or chits is some form, or whatever - are regulated by power and dominance of one party over another, and that holds in fish markets ‘à la criée’ (auction kind of thing), second hand sellers of anything such as lemony cars, Madoff taking money to ‘invest’, the US hawking its mortgage backed securities to Deutsche Bank. <br /><br />As anyone can see when the free market voodoo doesn’t quite do the trick, those in power rapidly abandon it and deny or hedge on the ‘free market’ BS to turn to regulation, aka nationalization and saddling the tax payers or workers with massive debts, see Ireland for ex. They feel no contradiction. That is because they never believed in their theory in the first place. It was just piece-meal silliness with ponderous footnotes constructed to legitimize the ‘profit motive’ - allowing the more top dogs to justify their actions and be pious, all clean hands, about their gains. Worked a treat!<br /><br />Those ‘gains‘ ultimately come from depleting the environment, basically free inputs (oil, logging, mining, etc.), the exploitation of labor, propaganda and trickery. <br /><br /><br />AnaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9263167.post-23603826185907076382010-11-19T11:28:12.713-05:002010-11-19T11:28:12.713-05:00You remind me that one of my first administrative ...You remind me that one of my first administrative jobs on the UC campus was in the Economics Department. I advised the graduate students on how to stay on track, how to apply for funding, etc. That part was fine, but the faculty were insane. They made no sense. They longed to be a "hard" science, but I left that department knowing they'd always be flaccid.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com