Freeing Us From the Myth of Economic Freedom

ANY CONVERSATION with a conservative, even a well educated one, having anything to do with economics, will almost inevitably lead to the conservative's exaltation of the "free market", as being not only the best but the only true way to allow society to operate. You've probably heard it youreslf, about how personal freedom must be defended and maintained at all costs, and the way to maintain it, politically and economically, is to keep the government out of the economy, and instead of trying to regulate or control the economy, government should simply stand aside, and allow market forces to control it. Freedom to that extent is anarchy. Freedom is often over rated, and must, by all means, be limited and well regulated. People can and do horrible things in the name of "freedom". This ideology of absolute economic freedom can be called, "Laissez faire", or "neo-liberalism", among other terms,and it came to dominate Ameridcan thought beginning with the American industrial revolution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As of toady, its basically a semi-religious gospel system of belief, especially among conservatives. It is, of course, utterly false. Exactly how is deteailed in a new book by Harvard scholar Naomi Oreskes and journalist Eric Conway, titled: "The Big myth: How American Buisness Taught Us To Loathe Government and Love the Free Market". This seminal monograph is a profoundly important explanation of intellectual history in economics, and, as it says in Buddhism "Mind foreruns all conditions". Intellectual history, the history of ideals, underpins all hisotorical activity, ultimately. during the Trump administration, Trump & the Republicans, bent on deregulating the corporate economy as always, eliminated regulations concerning transportation hazard materials by rail. Just this past week two disastrous train derailments caused tons of hazardous materials to pollute the environmnet, most notably in East Palestine, Ohio. Suddenlly, in congress, there is renewed bipartisan support for reinstating regulations and making new regulations concerning transporting hazardous waste materials by train. A completely unregulated free market economy is a horible idea, a disaaster either happening or waiting to happen, as experience and common sense have clearly shown. As Adam Smith repeated often: the banking business in particular must be regulated by government for the safety and security of society. The fact that we often fail to put necesary regulations in place until its too late, until after some economic disaster has already occurred, is evidence of our societal reluctance to abandon the cherished myth of the benefits of free markets, the myth that the unfettered free market is the best, most effieienct, and ultimately fairest way to allocate resources. Nothing could be further from the truth.