Working In Harmony

TO PRIVATIZE, TO CORPORATIZE, or to not....Adam Smith, considered the father of modern capitalism, wrote, in his book "The Wealth of nations", that human economic activity, if left alone and untinkered, is a natural force, like the wind and the tides, wherein an"invisible hand-like" force produces natural harmony and balance in the economic realm. Then, he qualified it a bit. He said that government action on behalf of business owners was never justified, but that government assistance to workers was always justified. Adam smith, the closet socialist. Enter Milton Friedman, the twentieth century giant among economists, who, with his "Chicago school" comrads at the U. of Chicago, beginning in the nineteen fifties, proclaimed the supremacy of the Smithian free market bible, and the supremacy of the free market, unfettered by such distorting annoyances as government welfare, minimum wage laws, and environmental protection regulation. Presumably, Dr. Friedman also opposed corporate welfare, but this is less clear. Friedman's antithesis, John M. Keynes, advocated government spending to stimulate recession plagued economies. The new deal, versus reagonomics. Today, the United states is privatizing everything, including prisons, support services for the military, the military itself. Off in the corner, chastised and berated, stand Obamacare, a meager indicator that socialism is not yet dead in America. Of the top ten richest countries in the world, per capita, the United States ranks about ninth, while Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, bastions of socialism, all rank in the top five. The wealthiest nation? Little Luxembourg, unburdened by military spending. It may be that both socialism and capitalism both work just fine, and better yet, when allowed to operate in harmony.