Free markets fail

Duncan Cameron of rabble.ca discusses in this article how the free market has, and continues to, fail us.

I copied the following:

… price setting is not politically neutral after all. The market does not abolish power relationships: it facilitates the accumulation of market power in fewer and fewer corporate hands. The accumulation of economic power leads straight to the concentration of political power and allows corporate executives to increase their take of what we all produce, while reducing the share anybody else gets.

Contrary to market dogma, governments do not fail, they are the main instrument for deciding who gets what, and corporations have invested continuously to achieve political power commensurate with private economic wealth.

It is still widely assumed that private investment in corporate stocks and bonds outperforms public investments in non-military government services. It is thought wiser for you to put your money in Coca-Cola than in public health insurance, not only because you might not get sick, and could well make a financial gains, but because the market rate of return always outshines iffy public investment spending on health, reduction of child poverty, recreation or the arts.

The reality is otherwise. In most of the world people do not have any funds to invest as individuals, while people have basic human needs for food, shelter and water that go unmet. Societies fare poorly when illiteracy is widespread, poor health prevails, and social inequalities are widespread. Despite the market works best rhetoric, allowing corporations to control investments in education, healthcare and other basic public services is expensive and inefficient compared to public investment and delivery of services, as comparisons of the two models (say Norway with the U.S.) shows.

Market rate of return is not up to measuring human well-being, and quality of life. As the world economic crisis deepens, rather than continuing to speculate about how to maximize rates of market return, financial market participants are now more concerned about the return of their funds: the money that was entrusted to the care of the market. The neoliberal world may never be the same.