:: The Rational Radical Blog ::

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Free Market AND A Safety Net

Free-market competition is the best choice where profit, efficiency, capital distribution and innovation are the goals. The breakup of AT&T's government-protected monopoly in 1984 unleashed healthy market forces to sort out rightful winners and losers in the telecommunications industry. I can envision a day when the U.S. Postal Service is privatized.

Sometimes, though, society properly wants everyone to succeed. Do we really want some children to win while others lose? Is it desirable for some elderly people get adequate food and medical care while others don't? Should competition determine who gets mental-health or drug-addiction treatment, the chance to go to college or proper prenatal care?

Free-market competition works fine for those capable of competing. But children, the elderly, the mentally ill, the unemployed and other groups can't effectively compete for their own prosperity. A true nation frees capable individuals to be productive, yet joins together to support and encourage those who aren't productive yet, are no longer productive or who need help in order to regain productivity. You are free to rise as far as you want individually, but we should unite as a nation to mitigate the worst of life's ills: uneducated and exploited children, desperate and suffering elderly, abandonment of the mentally and physically ill, hunger and destitution for the able-bodied but unfortunate.

This is a GREAT exposition of why just a "free market" is not appropriate, indeed is harmful to moral values.

Jack Clark 9:39 PM [+]   
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