Free markets can not exist but the label is a tool of manipulation

By Glen Wallace

Advocating for a free market is like advocating for a square circle -- an impossibility.  Markets operate much like a game, and just like a game needs rules that all the players are bound by for the game to work, so does a market require rules that players are bound by as well in order for that market to operate at all.  The terms 'bound' and 'free' are mutually exclusive terms. 

I've never heard of a free market advocate suggesting, for instance, abandoning the Universal Commercial Code (UCC) that most all businesses abide and are bound by.  Instead there is a general recognition that there needs to be some set of rules that everyone in the business community more or less agrees to bound by in order for the markets to run smoothly.  The UCC is just one example of the myriad of different types of rules, laws and contracts that the market is bound by, both within and without, that even the free market advocates would agree are entirely necessary for the markets to exist at all, let alone run smoothly.

The 'free market' just seems to be some vague pie in the sky variable ideal that people fit into all their fanciful capitalistic hopes and dreams.  The problem with vague goals is that some powerful forces can use them as a means to reach their own personal goals by leveraging the masses that struggle for their goals using as their goal what they think is the same goal as the ruling elite.  What the masses never realize, is that the goal of the ruling elite and the masses never was the same but rather the goal of the elite is at the expense of the masses.  But still the elite create this deliberately vague goal that they call a 'free market' and convince the masses that reaching this goal will lead to
everyone's hopes and dreams being realized.  And of course the elite will give the masses step by step instructions on how to reach that goal.  The instructions are given because the elite cannot reach their own goal without riding on the backs of the masses who mistakenly think not that they are carrying the load of the wealthy and powerful trying to get more wealthy and powerful, but rather that they are working to achieve their own goals that they have fitted into the label of 'free market.'

But it has never been the plebs that have designed the so called 'free market' but rather it is the bourgeois that have designed the market system to operate in their best interest at the expense of the proletariat that have carried on their backs the bourgeois to any given market system.

Inevitably for those who fail in any market they either will blame themselves or blame the markets for being not free enough and often then will just work harder to create a system that the winners who have already designed the current system say that needs to be done to create a 'truly free market.' But what the winners who design the market system just try to do is tweak the markets in whatever manner will allow them to squeeze out a little more profit because there is never enough profit for them and it is always a fun challenge for them to see how much more they can gain the system in their own advantage.

But the point is there is a vague goal created such that a great variety of goals in the minds of individuals can easily fit their own goal into the vague goal in the sky.  Now you have a great number of people chasing after the goal with one label and therefore everyone chasing that goal with the same label thinks that they are chasing after the same thing even though the goal of each individual in the chase varies widely.  The only question left then, is who is going to design the path to the goal with the same label.  It will of course be those already with power that design the primrose path that
everyone follows because they are convinced that is the one route to their seemingly shared goal.  Now, everyone with different goals in their minds effective pull the ropes that pull the bourgeois chariot down the primrose path by advocating for legislation that the proletariat  have become convinced will help them reach what they believe is the same shared destination but in reality is the route to a very exclusive destination for the ruling elite that in all likelihood each member of the middle and lower classes has already been excluded from reaching.