The Free Market: A True Superman (You do remember Superman isn't real ... right?)

The free market is back as a savior for all sorts of things, from schools to health care. It's the kind of renaissance that can only happen in America. It was only a few years ago that ineffective regulation played a key role in a major financial collapse and a disastrous oil spill. Within the lifetime of many Americans, we have seen government step in to guarantee safety in the workplace, the growth of infrastructure needed for economic development, the provision of food and health care to the most vulnerable Americans, and the protection of our natural environment. Government stepped into these arenas to avoid what happened in the financial crisis and the gulf oil spill; to avoid the fallout that happens when corporations or other private interests make decisions that may or may not be in their own short and long term interests, but are clearly not in the long term interests of the country as a whole. This fallout must not be as much of a concern, because there is a great clamor for things like closing down the Department of Education, destroying public unions, and allowing natural gas drilling to be free of both environmental regulation and taxation. Big government has become part of the axis of evil, and self interest the white knight riding in to save the day. There isn't a shred of evidence to show that anything fundamental has change in eighty or fifty or five years. There is a lot of money being spent to make it look like there has, or like none of those reforms were necessary in the first place. A lot of money but no evidence ... that kind of sums up politics in 2011. It is the temporary triumph of dollars over sense. It is a temporary triumph because in reality the free market is no hero. It is a myth. It is a figment of our historical imagination. It won't even save us from ourselves ... only we can do that when we work together to achieve the common good, a task that I'm sorry to say is kind of impossible without a government.