Myths. A Rant.

The "free market" Utopia is a myth.

Now, Im not a communist, but I am a firm believer in social justice and the idea that we are all in the same boat. I am also of the firm belief that humanity tops corporatism in all things. I guess I think a mixed market is better.

The free market myth goes thus: Let the market decide. Prices, wages, and regulations from safety to workers rights. Remove government intervention and hand over the reigns to the Corporate Lords.

Does that sound about right?

Reagan and Mulroney were great believers in the free market. They pushed their agenda's until everyone got a clue, and voted in parties and politicians who weren't so.....stupid?? Harper and Bush are the next generation to take the mythology to heart. But these guys are Neoliberals. Its kind of like a religion in oh so many ways. You cannot see the "free market". You cannot hear the "free market".

You just have blind faith that it's there. It all comes from books written by fabled economists and right wing think tanks full of rich folks. No one is allowed to dispute the holy written words.

How does that correlate in the real world?

Well, in a country like ours it translates to up to 300,000 homeless, 16 percent of children living in poverty, and almost 2 million people about to be homeless. It leads to an insidious dismantling of the safety net including Womens advocacy groups, welfare and the court challenges program. it means the decimation of Universal health care, Workers rights being trampled, basic human rights squashed....Its all in the news.

In the US, the free market means similar things, but it has evolved (I know, evolved is one of those scien-temific words) on a far broader scale. I personally think its been slowed in Canada only because of that pesky Trudeau era. I mean, that dude seriously compromised the holy tenants of the "free market". Social housing programs, the abolishment of capital punishment, Gay people being accepted, a charter of rights and freedoms....That's all librul Humanitarian talk. The RWingnuts hate Trudeau for a reason, he made many of us believe in a Just Society.

With the religion of the "free market" we also have a new class of citizens emerging.

Well not exactly new. I believe the term used to be "serfdom". In an article in the Province from a couple days ago:

But recent reports of the disgustingly dirty, dangerous interiors of Vancouver's seediest flophouses not only help expose the callousness of some megamillionaire businessmen -- they also punctuate the absence of options for the most wretched.

There was a time when I comfortably turned a blind eye to the infestation of junkies and parasites who collect at the grey-grim corner of Main and Hastings. After all, much of it was, and still is, their own doing.

Wretched. Their own doing. Cut em loose.

I got the oddest feeling reading this. The writer, was in their own way saying that we should help the homeless and those who are addicted and on the street. Grudgingly, and only because it was now getting so financially difficult.....for them....

But it was the choice of words that caught my concern and attention. That and the fact that this person really doesn't get that its not just the "drug addicts" anymore. (My personal thoughts are to help everyone, regardless) Now its whole families forced to head to the worst parts of the city where they may be able to afford some sort of roof, a place where children shouldn't ever be.

Now the "wretched" are from all walks of life. Now the "wretched", are living breathing recipients of the bounty of the "free market". Hail to the gods of corporatism. Its interesting that many of these same worshippers of the Mythology of the Free market, use the bible as a sheild to do it.

Now don't I recall something in the ten commandments? Summin about "false gods"? Think Jesus would have been a believer in the free market? Nope. He was definately a liberal.