Ethics Newsline®

Last week’s guest commentary, “Free for Me,” argued that it is disingenuous, at best, for business leaders to shun regulation while hiding behind “free market” arguments when in fact they are manipulating rules (and loopholes) specifically created by regulation.

The piece drew quite a bit of mail reflecting on the nature of free markets.

“Free market philosophy made more sense in the days when a small, adventurous enterprise could go into the vast immeasurable territories of untapped resources and race, no holds barred, to see who can return quickest with the biggest catch,” one reader contended. “Now, with modern technologies and the awareness of complex interconnected environments and systems, it is dangerous and irresponsible to assume an industry should be free to fish until it cannot find any more fish, cut down forests until it cannot find another tree, strip mine and abandon the land, suck the oil dry, build the flimsiest homes, or let stock markets be run like casinos.”

Another reader drew an analogy from history: “You are right that citing the ‘free market’ has become a semantic sham. The real concept of the free market refers to what economists call ‘pure competition.’ What many free-marketers really want is monopoly power under the guise of free enterprise. That is what Teddy Roosevelt saw and tried to fix (successfully for quite a while) with the antitrust movement. It is time to get back to it and make it work again.”

One reader’s letter reflected a thread of frustration common among several readers’ responses and, of course, to the general climate of anger over the financial implosion. “We’re getting ripped off twice with lies and duplicity and just plain blind greed and belief that the pyramid can’t run out of pointy end. All in the name of a ‘freedom’ for corporations that are less encumbered than a newborn child when it comes to responsibility, integrity, and pity.”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman