The market is a god that has failed

by Systemic Disorder Thursday, Mar. 15, 2012 at 11:11 AM

If the “market” keeps deciding more people should be unemployed, more education should be wasted, more people should not have a decent retirement, more public services should be eliminated, more wages cut while prices rise, and more money should be concentrated in fewer hands at the expense of everybody else, then why should the “market” be a holy sacrament that cannot be questioned?

The market is a god that has failed.

In earlier centuries, societies were centered on monarchs who derived their authority from divine will and today "markets" are treated in the same way — as a "natural order" ordained from above. European medieval peasants were kept in their place by church and lord, cementing the rule and wealth of the privileged. The lords made the laws and controlled the courts, and the churches provided the propaganda and justifications. God willed the arrangement, and who was a peasant to challenge it?

Mystical concepts such as the “magic of the market,” are the intellectual core of the idea that “markets” should decide all social and economic outcomes. It is “markets” “impersonally” imposing “discipline” on working people, on entire countries, and those on whom “discipline” is imposed should shut up and take their medicine. But “market” is simply a nice word to mask the imposition of specific interests.

Full article at http://wp.me/p2cpPS-5