What Failed Capitalism

The moniker of the Liberal Left is “Capitalism has Failed.” However when we had true capitalism and free market in this nation it did anything but fail. What the Liberals mean when they say Capitalism has failed, is that big “fat cats” have gobbled up all the money and left us garbling for their crumbs. Their arguments include famous enigmas such as Enron, Bernie Madoff, the Housing Market Crash, and our Health Care system. Frankly none of these were a product of a free capitalist market. In fact they are all cases against government regulation and oversight. Let’s use these very same examples to explain.
Enron was a company run amuck through gaming an artificial system aided by government regulations it helped to write. Had there been a “free market”, Enron would not have been able to capitalize to the point of a monopoly, building it’s own demand, not only for its energy products but for its stock by manufacturing grossly inflated numbers. Free market competitors would never have allow this to get so far out of hand.
Bernie Madoff flaunted his previously good name to peddle private investors into a ponzi scheme of enormous proportions. There were several private whistle blowers whose warnings would have naturally thwarted the Madoff scheme much earlier and saved many unwitting investors millions. However Bernie was legitimized by the very Federal agencies that were supposed to monitor, investigate and halt such a travesty of the free market.
The Housing Market disaster was literally created out of Federal meddling in the market. Explain? In short, Congress (led by Barney Frank with a literal bedfellow from Fannie May & Freddie Mac) began giving incentives to lending institutions to lend to low income families. Eventually this led to regulation that actually punished those who did not. Certainly the institutions are not guilt free, however the nature of the free market was perverted by the “well meaning” Congressmen who followed the lead of “compassion” and to “level the playing field.”  The result was a housing bubble that institutions could not help but inflate.
Our Healthcare system was touted as the best as witnessed by all who come here from all ends of the earth to receive care that is simply unavailable elsewhere. Yes, such healthcare is expensive. However it is easy to point out where governmental regulation caused coast heights. We enjoyed many levels of insurance options form “Catastrophic only” to “Fully Comprehensive Care” at premiums that varied accordingly. One of the incentives to success in American was the level of healthcare you could provide for your family. Somehow healthcare is being misconstrued as a right and that all rights being equal the rich have to lower their care to something mediocre that the poor ultimately drag everyone down to when there is no longer a motivation to succeed.
The “Health Care Debate” was a perfect example of government intervention that interferes with reform rather than aids it. Rather than having faith in the free market by allowing cross state competition to bring costs down, the then Liberal Congress under unprecedented pressure from the Executive administration took over 16% of our economy to be made unconscionably inefficient on a governmental scale and ridiculously ineffective on a bureaucratic scale.
In fact it seems impossible to uncover corruption within big business without uncovering governmental interference, incentives, meddling, ignorance, or downright collusion. Let’s take Monsanto for example. They may appear to be a very successful company who works closely with the FDA and other government agencies to increase crop production and our massive food requirements.
In reality Monsanto is another Enron in the making. We should expect to see a disaster that will make the Enron scandal appear insignificant. You as an aware citizen should know that many of the Monsanto developed and owned GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) are banned in most European nations.  An even worse long story short, Monsanto has infringed upon anyone who attempts to continue growing “organic crops.” Monsanto has sued those who buy and sell natural seed if even a small portion of the seed is found to have any Monsanto GMOs in them. Farmers who attempt to grow natural crops find GMOs from even distant farmers are infiltrating their crops via wind and insect pollination. The courts have upheld Monsanto’s ownership of these farmer’s crops just because it contains some Monsanto GMOs. Obviously the natural farmer should be the one suing the Monsanto farmer for contaminating his otherwise natural crop, but no! Monsanto continues to win and take over a greater and greater percentage of our food supply market. You may want to consider the fact that this includes the ethanol crop as well.
Free Market Capitalism has not failed. It is the lack of freedom and transparency that has failed. Unfortunately the carrier of the disease is vilified instead of the disease.
How important is economic freedom anyway? The ten most economically free markets in the world enjoy the greatest Income, Civil Rights, Life Expectancy, Employment, Healthy Environment, and the lowest Infant Mortality and Child Labor.
Economic Freedom means having Property Rights protected by impartial rule of law. It means Free Trade with minimum regulation and transparent transactions and operations. It means a stable national currency free of inflation and a minimally necessary government that allows natural market adjustments and even failures.
By those standards we’ve fallen from 3rd to 6th in economic freedom in the last ten years. It is no coincidence that Income, Civil Rights, Life Expectancy, Employment, a Healthy Environment, and Infant Mortality have followed suit.
The so-called good intentions of the current administration are to control our economy rather than let it prosper. This is called a lack of faith in the tried and proven, over controlling the market, which has always proven disastrous. Have they never noticed that?
Spread the word.