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FEATURE ARTICLE |
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The Free Market as Regulator
Powell Gammill Date: 08-18-2009 Subject: Economy - Economics USA Listen to Texas Straight Talk. Click the play button below. Many
lawmakers voted in favor of these unconstitutional bailouts, believing
that these corporations were too big to fail, and allowing them to go
under would precipitate widespread economic disaster. This
second wave of citizen outrage at the bailouts has left these lawmakers
with a bit of egg on their face, and once again, they feel the need to
"do something" to "fix" it. Shouldn't there be a regulatory structure in place governing executive compensation? Politically, it seems quite feasible. People are outraged that the system has once again gutted the many to make a few at the top fantastically wealthy. But they are incorrectly demonizing the free market. What
we need to realize is that there WAS a regulatory structure in place
that was attempting to stop bad management, including overpaying
executives. That regulatory structure is the
free market, and when poor management brought these companies to the
point of bankruptcy, Congress circumvented the wisdom of the free
market, and inserted its own judgment at our expense. And now because of that intervention, we will burdened with massive new regulations. We can be certain this effort will fail. The
free market is a naturally occurring phenomenon that can't be
eliminated by governments, not even totalitarian ones like the former
Soviet Union. It can be regulated, over-taxed and manipulated until it is driven underground. Lately
it has been wrongly accused of doing so many things it just doesn't do,
that are really the fault of crony corporatism and convoluted
government policies that brought on the crisis. Too
many people equate the free market with big business doing whatever it
wants, but that is not the free market. Unconstitutional taxpayer
funded bailouts are what allow giant corporations to run roughshod over
the economy. The free market is what puts them out of business when they misbehave. The
free market is you and your neighbors working hard to produce what you
produce, and exchanging goods and services voluntarily, in mutually
agreeable arrangements. The free market is about respecting property rights and contracts. It is not about building up oligarchs and monopolies and confiscatory tax theft - these are creatures of government. |