How ‘The Market’ Eats Our Independence

Money dominates our society far more than America’s Founding Fathers intended when America was born. Power came from the “consent of the governed” — the core principle of the new nation. Citizens of the new republic seized upon every opportunity to take a hand in the government of society and to talk about it. But even by the 1830’s the young French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville warned about an “industrial aristocracy” that could impoverish and brutalize the men it uses, abandoning them in a time of crisis. The expansion of market rules to all aspects of society has indeed turned everything into a commodity, and leaves no rewards for things that don’t function as commodities, says Mike Konzell in his book “Freedom From The Market.” Today, markets do not open up opportunities as much as they create dependencies. Workers’ wages, time and health depend on market-driven choices which are compulsions rather than freedoms. Economic elites have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The distribution of the necessities of life in a market economy does not match what we need to live free lives. Vital services that exist by their nature outside the market include social insurance, education, and health care. Health, education, and time are part of the necessary baseline for exercising our freedom, and as such it is necessary that all of us have access to them in roughly equal proportions. <a href="https://barry-gander.medium.com/how-the-market-eats-our-independence-bf5f90d3c481">Click Here</a>