A "free market" without regulations is like a "free society" without laws.

[TahitiNut]

What would that look like? No law against murder. No law against burglary. No law against rape. No law against child molestation. The equivalent conditions are what the corporatists have promulgated in the 'market.'

It's insane. As our "free society" becomes the scorched earth in the "war against crime" and the "war against drugs" and the rabid whack-jobs who lose sleep worrying that someone somewhere is having more fund in bed with another consenting adult than the whack job can imagine, we have a prison population that's the envy of dictators worldwide.

What kind of sense does it make to create a police state in our society and anarchy in the markets? Since when does "might makes right" make any sense whatsoever in either realm?

We have creatures in the 'market' now considered "too big to fail." Where are the trust-busters? Since when does it make any sense whatsoever to afford SIZE some greater 'right' to economic life support from the taxpayers?

[OwnedByFerrets]

1. Great campaign slogan or bumper sticker.

[TahitiNut]

3. Thanks. Somehow folks have to wake up to the propaganda.

It almost seems as though it's a kind of "political precession" ... where economic pressure is gyroscopically translated into socially-draconian attitudes. People are apparently scapegoating other people for the rampant rape and pillage of the global corporatists. Wal*Mart wipes out small-town economies and those people blame the urban working poor? It's insane. Enron/Reliant pillages California of over $12 billion and they elect Arnold and ask for more of the same? It's insane.

The talking heads repeat the mantra of "free market" and calls for deregulation at the same time they repeat the cries for criminalization of abortion and sexual orientation. It's insane. How can the waste, fraud, and abuse of the Defense Department be solved by discharging gays? It's insane.

[tnlurker]

2. kick

[nashville_brook]

4. that is excellent. i will be using this. :)

[TahitiNut]

5. Thanks, but ...

... I should probably mention Olive Garden, smoking, breast-feeding, obesity, sexism, Ralph Nader, Britney's pregnant sister, and testosterone poisoning for the more erudite talents on DU. (sigh)

[readmoreoften]

6. No it's more than that. It's a stratified society without laws.

It's like a "free society" without laws and one set of people owns tanks, nuclear and biological weapons, tear gas, riot gear, machine gun factories, police batons, laboratories, satellites, microwave crowd dispersal devices, and commercial grade digital editing and broadcast systems while the other set of people owns some clothes, some food, some houses, a few guns, some consumer model computers, some bandanas, some placards, some magic markers, and some gadgets.

[codjh9]

7. Great analogy, and as others are saying, good bumper sticker too!!

[prayin4rain]

8. Yeah exactly ... you are free to

benefit and use and be happy but you are restricted from doing knowingly destructive things to it.

[bleever]

9. Please rent a big plane and fly this post on a banner in an OH-VA-PA-FL

kind of circuit, focusing on wherever people are shopping, or not shopping.

I was happy to read the FDR quotes earlier today, where he talked in a plain and clear way about how the free market was no longer free, at that time.

You and he were addressing the same target.

[phiddle]

10. "Free Market" makes as much sense as "Free Football".

Every game NEEDS rules. Without good rules and good referees, competition becomes destructive.

[cliffordu]

11. Great work, TahitiNut. K&R!!