LUDIC LOG

Goodness knows, we Americans like to pretend a lot of things: marijuana is harmful; television is endlessly fascinating; there's nothing wrong with keeping a third of the black population impoverished and another third in jail; our culture is the envy of all the world; North Korea and Syria are terrifying and serious threats to world peace.

But as stupid beliefs go, nothing is more comical -- or more tragic -- than our unshakeable conviction that there's a market solution to everything.

Now, of course, when I say that we believe this, what I mean is that the people who own our society, its leaders, and its organs of political discourse believe it. I don't know what you believe; and I don't even believe there is a market, that's how perverse I am. But for all intents and purposes, and until we the people (whoever we are) grow enough spine to openly question what we're told, this is the Sacred Credo of the United States of America: there's a market solution for everything. Or, to put it in simpler terms, the best way to solve a problem is to hand it over to businessmen.

The patent absurdity of this idea I won't even bother to dismantle, so self-evident is it. Leaving aside the obvious fact that many of our problems are caused by market capitalism in the first place, and leaving aside the obvious fact that market solutions are only enacted when there's a large profit to be made -- a criterion not applicable to many of society's ills -- we need only consider the fact that in order for a solution to be market-based, the people whose problems it solves have to have the money to pay for it, and if they had lots of money, they probably wouldn't have those problems to begin with. Market populists and libertarians are fond of daring their opponents to name one single problem (other than their eternal favorites, the police and the military...what kind of world do these people want, anyway?) that big government has ever solved. I can name dozens. So, my counter-challenge: name one single problem big business has solved that they either didn't create themselves, or didn't create a new problem that's even worse than the first one. Of course, it's a ridiculous question, thrown out there only to throw the absurdity of its twin into sharp relief.

My real beef here is not the inherent ridiculousness of the idea, nor of the collary notion that any alternative to market solutions -- say, social welfare programs -- are simply dirty rotten communism by another name and will have us all prostrating to Uncle Joe and drinking engine-coolant vodka by year's end (someone obviously forgot to clue in the thriving quasi-socialist nations of western Europe, Scandinavia, Oceania -- even Canada, for crissakes -- of their no doubt imminent ruin, surely to be followed by a murderous rendezvous with latter-day Stalinism). It's the fact that no one seems to notice the tremendous problems the oligarchic apologists are simply letting get worse and worse and worse, and blocking any attempt at a real solution by claiming it's an affront to the Holy Credo of "letting the market decide". Pardon my impertinence; I come from a broken home. But who, exactly, died and put the Market in charge of everything?

Global warming? Sure, it's a problem (if you believe a bunch of eggheads who aren't even on a company payroll). But the Market will take care of it. Try not to notice the fact that the Market (or, rather, the actual companies and individuals who make up the Market) have never, ever, ever voluntarily backed off or slowed down their efforts until someone made them. Massive unempoyment? Hey, look, we're just obeying the Law of the Market by moving all our jobs to Laos. If the laid-off workers can't get training for a better job, that's not our problem. Whoever told you company loyalty was a two-way street, anyway? Pollution, energy gouging, environmental havoc? Look, the Market will take care of these things, in time. It'll fix the problems just as sure as it created them to begin with.

It's a kind of insanity to blame all your problems on one person, or event, or thing. Samuel Gompers pointed out that nothing is more demoralizing than blaming all human ills on a single agent, be it capitalism or anything else. But it's the same sort of madness to claim that the solution to every problem can come from one single thing, especially something as ephemeral and insubstantial as "The Market". When communists used to claim that their particular ideology was the cure-all for every social woe, we were smart enough not to believe them. Why have we been so quick to accept the exact same argument, this time wearing a salesman's face?