Truly Free Marketplace

The Marketplace:

The Hard to Accept Realities of the Free Market Economy

This is a description of the true Free Market Economy. Most economists, financiers, investors, bankers, and especially business people do not ever describe the free market economy accurately. They do not know what it is. They do not understand that the real free market economy is by definition an extreme form of democracy. In fact, the free market is socialism, and socialism at its best. The free market is radical equality, radical democracy, and radical inclusion of every member of society. And just to be sure the reader is not missing the most important point: if you are breathing, you are a member of society. I intend to knock you cold with one, two three punches. Love, John Manimas.

(One) Let's start with the primary self-serving blindness of the conservatives:

A) non-interference of government; and

B) labor costs (wages): you get money only if you work for us.

First, I am going to name our American economic system: The Capitalist Controlled Market Compatible With False Democracy as a Screen for Economically Enforced Oppression. For short: "The American Oppression Economy." (AOE) It works smoothly with the fake democracy of the Two-Party Tyranny. The AOE was once blatantly acknowledged by the practice of the peculiar institution of American racial slavery. Later, we removed the legal status of slave in order to make it look like people would all be free. Except for the requirement that in order to participate in the economy you must be employed by a capitalist. As long as capitalist had to hire 100% of people able to work, the people went along. But those days are over.

Let's look at "A)" first: the conservative blindness is so completely obtuse that it borders on the comical. The first thing a business owner, a capitalist, or a conservative says is: "We should have free enterprise and that means there should be no interference in the business world, or in the economy by the government." This concept, that there should be no interference in the world of business or production and commerce is IMPOSSIBLE AND EVERY PERSON IN BUSINESS KNOWS THIS BASIC FACT. As soon as the government or the community builds a road, they have interfered in the world of business and commerce. If any location is identified as a "commercial center" or "business district" or a "market" that action has been taken to support and promote the smooth operation of business activities, the convenience of storing, buying and selling. Note that the name for a place where people go to buy things is called a "store" and of course a "store" is a place where things are "stored" or kept. The word "storage" means to keep something in a safe place and under safe conditions while it is not needed for use, and to have it available when someone does need to use it. Such a place for storage is often called a "warehouse" which means a "house" or building or structure where "wares" are kept in storage. Of course, when the owner of merchandise expects to sell that merchandise in a relatively short period of time, it will be put on display or on ready "for sale" status in the "store" so that the prospective customers can come to the "marketplace" and offer to buy it with their money. This is the activity we call "commerce" and the activity of commerce NEVER occurs without the support and cooperation of the government. Many persons engaged in commerce or who invest money in commercial enterprise or in shipping, either by real ships or by trucks or trains, all need permission to operate from the government, a license. The police and the armed forces all exist for purposes that include the protection of commerce and the protection of all of the activities that fall within the scope of "trade." The police and armed forces are used to protect all of the property that people possess included property that is in the process of being made, or stored or bought or sold. In brief, the primary services of government, the public works or roads and bridges, and all of the police forces and real estate and weaponry and tools used by the police forces and the armed forces exist in order to support and protect the activities of business, trade and commerce. It is NOT POSSIBLE FOR ANYONE TO DO BUSINESS OR PARTICIPATE IN THE MARKETPLACE WITHOUT THE SUPPORT AND PROTECTION OF GOVERNMENT. In fact, the protection of the marketplace is probably the primary reason for the existence of government. The evolution of civil society and civil rights is NOT the beginning of government or the first order of business. Civil law and civil rights evolved AFTER society has naturally developed systems to support the commercial and productive business of the community. We can see that even if we look at how human society operated long ago when the human clan or tribe was composed of hunters and gatherers.

In that imaginary state that our renowned political and social philosophers used to call "the state of nature," we operated as hunters, fishers and gatherers of food. We can imagine a tribe that has found a good place for fishing or for gathering berries. When the fish are running, or the berries are ripe, the women and children, and the men, will go to the place where the food is available and begin to net or harvest the fish, and pick or harvest the berries. However, there would be a natural concern that another tribe or another group of people might come and claim that they have ownership of the fishing location or the berries. Therefore, some of the men and women would be assigned the task of watching and being armed for the purpose of sounding an alarm and being prepared to prevent a conflict with another group or prevail in any conflict with another group. This we could justifiably call the early form of "military security." Paths through plains or forests, or over mountain ridges, would all be avenues of transportation used for hunting, gathering, trade, travel, commerce. Even before people had what we call "government," the societal group, whatever it may have been, naturally engaged in the group activities that supported investment, trade, commerce and the management of productive and valuable property.

Beyond question, as society became more formally organized, from tribal community to permanent settlement, agricultural community, craft centers and towns and cities. Then, the "government," however that government was configured, organized and recognized, existed to support and protect the work of the community and the wealth that the work of the community produced. Later in the evolution of society and government, we would add more elaborate and institutionalized forms of cooperation between those who perform the tasks of government and those who perform the tasks of "business" such as taxes, support and subsidy programs, and public works such as roads, armed forces, forts, ships, lighthouses, systems of communication such as fire towers and runners, and on and on. Government originally comes into existence in order to support and protect trade. After a time, government can become oppressive of people precisely because it spontaneously, by way of social interactions, comes to support and protect the market activities of some people more than others. Some people come to be oppressed or injured by the tendency of alliances between business and government to operate for the benefit of some and the substantial losses of others. Then the concept of social justice and civil rights evolves. The written source that many business people identify as the source of Western Civilization, the Bible, is described and defined by historians and theologians as a description of the boundaries and principles of social justice, the rules with which government should abide when performing its duties and exercising its powers to support and protect the marketplace. THEREFORE, when a business owner or investor or capitalist or banker or insurer says there should be less interference in business by government, that person is a speaking as a moron and and idiot because there is no marketplace without government. The purpose of government is to maintain and protect the marketplace. Without government, the marketplace would be a battleground. Even with government, the marketplace still becomes a battleground, but with less bloodshed.

Now let's address "B)" the long incessant moaning and groaning sound that we here throughout the day and night. This annoying, painful sound is the plaintive drone of capitalists, investors, bankers and business owners who keep saying over and over again, continuously, incessantly, without rest, that the costs of labor, wages, are too high. It is impossible to earn a profit, impossible to stay in business, impossible to produce anything worthwhile because all of the money invested must be paid to the workers who do the work. The situation requires drastic measures, shutting down and going out of business, or moving operations to another location where there are hundreds or thousands of people who are impoverished and starving and who are willing to work for whatever wages are offered. People are no longer willing to work, they say, unless they are overpaid. The people who want enough money to buy things, such as food and shelter and clothing and transportation, demand wages that are too high, impossible to pay out, and business cannot support such high wages, EVEN THOUGH THE WAGES ARE THE INCOME OF THE PEOPLE WHO ARE ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY CUSTOMERS IN ORDER TO KEEP THE MARKETPLACE OPEN AND OPERATING. WITH NO CUSTOMERS, THERE IS NO MARKET, NO EFFECTIVE DEMAND, NO SALES, NO AVENUE TO BE IN BUSINESS AND TAKE A PROFIT. To justify their existence, the business people deny that they engage in business to take a profit from the sales of goods and services and instead claim that they are the source of all incomes. They claim that they "create jobs" for people who would otherwise have no productive activity and no income to "support" themselves and their families. This claim by the capitalists that they "create" jobs is complete nonsense, not only wrong but impossibly wrong. All hiring of workers occurs when and only when the capitalist has calculated that the opportunity for a business profit exists. There is "demand" for a product or service, and there is in fact effective demand in the marketplace to take a profit from the sales of specific goods or services. In order for the business calculation or estimate, or prospectus, to show a potential profit, there must be effective demand, and "effective demand" means not only are there people in the marketplace who want the product or service, but those same people who want also possess the money to make the purchase. They are real customers. If there are no real customers, there will be no effective demand and no basis to open for business. The origin of the hiring, and the origin of the "jobs," is the existence of the real customers. Real customers create jobs, always. The existence of real customers and effective demand is the origin and the only origin of all business opportunities, and therefore the origin of all business activities, of all investing, and of all productivity that occurs in the marketplace. The business entity, either a corporation or any other form of business organization is an opportunist that takes advantage of the effective demand and that is all. The business entity does not create jobs, and in fact since around the year 1700 business people, capitalists, have persistently re-invested much of their profits in the elimination of human labor by replacing human productive labor with machine labor. This reality warrants another paragraph about how capitalists and corporations, through the economic and technological process that we have called the "industrial revolution" have in fact succeeded in achievement of the goal of reducing or eliminating the need for human labor. The capitalist and the industrial corporation are the human inventions that most effectively DESTROY jobs for humans, not create them. This is such common knowledge for all historians it is rarely mentioned. To say that capitalists destroy jobs is as obvious as the moon is visible on a cloudless night.

The original promise of the industrial revolution was to liberate humankind, everyone, from harsh labor and the uncertainties and insecurities of the natural world: climate, natural disasters, disease. All of the social and economic problems of our times, the 21st century, arise from the fact that the industrial revolution has reached the point of great success. In fact, we are about to achieve complete success, complete success at dramatically reducing the need for human labor, and dramatic protection from disease. These two dramatic successes present us with dramatic problems. Our old principles and standards of social and economic organization don't work any more. Now that we have been liberated from the need for human labor, what do we do? On what basis does a citizen, a member of society, obtain money? His or her labor is no longer needed. We cannot give them money for labor because they are no longer performing labor for the capitalist. The capitalist does not need many humans for labor and has no motive to hire them. This state of our economy evolved over the period from about 1600 to the present. During the Renaissance, the European scientists exulted in the promise of the new scientific method and the re-discover of the ancient science of the Greek and Roman civilizations. Remember, Europe had experienced what we call the "Dark Ages" for several centuries, approximately from 600 through 1300, including a strange loss of faith in the human capacity to learn, and continuous fear of uncontrollable forces and divine and demonic spirits that could punished people for their sins. Suddenly, it appeared we might be able to learn, to come to understand how the universe works and exercise control over the natural world, become captains of our fate, masters of our destiny. What should we do with this new found knowledge and power? Make life easier for ourselves. That was the impulse and promise of science. It shows in much of what the renaissance scientists and writers wrote. Science brought a new hope to humankind, freedom from ignorance and liberation, through machines and mechanical sources of power, from the harsh and life-shortening wear and tear of harsh hand labor. It worked. We did learn more and we did invent and produce machines that provided us with mechanical power (steam and internal combustion and electricity generators) to perform labor. An then we invented electrical and electronic devices to perform more and more of the labor previously performed by human hands and human minds. We have now reached, in the 21st century, the age of robotics. It appears reasonable to expect that most human labor can be performed by a robot, a self-regulated servo-mechanism that will not have human needs or human rights. A robot can be turned off and it does nothing and demands nothing when it is turned off. But we humans are still here, and we cannot be turned off. Although, there are some commentators who suggest that the ultimate outcome of our new technology is that many of us flesh and blood humans will be turned off, involuntarily.

As the rise of science and technology and industry progressed, the definition of efficiency became solidified as any method of production that reduced the need for human labor. At the end of the twentieth century, the height of "efficiency" was deemed to be the enormous warehouses of the Amazon Corporation, with acres of electronic "pickers" and conveyors and packagers and shipping machines that converted an "order" typed into a computer into a product shipped to the person who "placed" the order. A giant automated warehouse, which is also obviously a "store," that performed a fantastic quantity of "labor" employing only a handful of people, is deemed still to be the very definition of "efficiency." BUT, what if our society had a different goal, and we defined "efficiency" not as a means to minimize human labor, but the opposite? What if we defined "efficiency" as a means to maximize the need for human labor? Then Amazon and all robotic labor arrangements would be deemed useless, the opposite of what we want to achieve. And why would we, or any society, define "efficiency" as the maximum employment of human labor? Because that could be the goal of a rational and peaceful society: to keep every member of society included in the labor of the community; to assure that every member of society participates in the work of the community, just like we did when we were "primitive" and survived by hunting and gathering or when we survived by growing our own plant foods and "husbanded" animals foods through the management and care of domestic animals. BEFORE INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY there never was any rational fear or concern that anyone would have "nothing to do," or that anyone would not need to work. Our experience of civilization, whether as the "pagani" or pagans or country folk living in forest and field and village, or the citizens of a city and an empire, we all had to work. There was no such thing as "unemployment." Everyone was connected to the land in some way, even if only as "owner" or nobility. The concept and reality of "unemployment" does not exist until AFTER the industrial revolution separates the poor from the land, when they can no longer grow their own food or milk their cow or eat their own chickens and ducks. With no land, the industrial citizen must work in an industrial or commercial enterprise in order to obtain wages, or salary, to be precise MONEY. And everyone in and industrial society needs money in order to purchase the food and shelter and other necessities that were previously available from the land.

Therefore, if anyone looks with eyes that are awake and alert, it is obvious that the human condition that we call "unemployment" does not exist until after the industrial revolution transforms society from "agrarian" to "industrial" or further still to our modern "technological" society. And, I would define our modern "technological" society as a society in which most people, if not all, have been persuaded that every human problem conceivable can and will be resolved by technology. What I see here, and I wish with religious intensity everyone else would see, is that our reliance on technology is similar to drug addiction. We minimize the destruction caused by the "unintended consequences" of technology, we deny the observed reality that new technology usually creates new problems, we deny that our technology is destructive of the natural resources we must have in order to live (water and soil and bacteria come to mind) and WE PERSISTENTLY AND NEUROTICALLY RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO RELY ON MORALITY, RELIGION OR PRACTICAL SOCIAL CHANGE IN ORDER TO SOLVE OUR SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS -- WE PREFER TO USE TECHNOLOGY. And, by our preference for technology over self-discipline and practical social institutions (often called "socialism"), we destroy the natural life-supporting environment. The predictable outcome of this preference for technology over social science and practical social organization is the suicide of the human species by the rejection of social science. The rejection of social science is embodied in and expressed by a religious doctrine, by the insistence that humans are not animals and we are therefore not subject to the limitations of natural processes. In other words, the human suicide comes to pass primarily by an irrational religious concept that we are above and beyond nature and "we can do whatever we want to do." Scientists, real scientists, understand clearly that "freedom" never means we can do whatever we want to do; it means we can choose one path instead of another. We have choices and that is the final meaning of "freedom." The laws of nature do not enable us to do whatever we want to do. We can choose to use social science, or "socialism" to address the human problems caused by the technological revolution. Many nations are doing exactly that. Americans are resisting. Americans are stuck with their religious doctrine that they are "exceptional" and not subject to the laws of nature that apply to animals. America is committing suicide.

(Two) Next, the self-serving blindness of liberals:

A) We just want to repair the imbalances; and

B) The rich need to give "charity" to alleviate poverty, which can't be helped -- the poor will always be with us (Jesus Christ). [That's not an expletive; it's an attribution.]

Liberals know that the economic system is ineffective and wrong; our economic system does not render the social justice that is -- or should be --the goal of society. Every act of charity is a condemnation of society. But the liberals don't want to be troublemakers. They are willing to rock the boat a little bit, but not too much. Changing the economic system to make it more effective in accomplishing social justice would be rocking the boat too much. So, we follow the advice of Jesus and Mohammed and we "give to the poor." We do not change the social system. That would make trouble. The rich would become upset, and we must not upset the rich. We accept an economic doctrine: the poor will always be with us. But a man who was raised as a Roman Catholic openly stated the opposite of that viewpoint. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan offered a different explanation of the problem of poverty, he said: "The main problem of the poor is that they don't have money." That, my friends, was and is the pinnacle of economic and social science and the height of human wisdom. That is in fact the correct formulation of the problem. And, my graduate professor of education, Dr. George Urch, once said to me: "Correctly identifying the problem is 85% of the solution." And I have never forgotten that.

The truth is, those who are fortunate because of their abilities and their skills at navigating the currents of society and finding a steady path of security do donate their old shoes and coats and furniture to the poor. They buy extra food, usually the food with a long "shelf life," and donate food to the poor. Isn't that sweet. How polite and "Christian" and generous. Each donation should come with a greeting card:

"Hello my poor and unfortunate neighbor. We are committed to the efficiency of industry and we do not need your labor. Therefore, you are excluded from the work and wealth of the community, which is to say -- we don't need you -- and therefore we will give you the minimum of everything so that we don't have to watch you die in the streets and necessitate a messy, septic and guilt-inducing clean up. We must have law and order, and we are sorry that our economic system is designed by a bunch of morons who pretend that they understand prices and profits and interest and a lot of other horseshit, but they do not understand that you should be included in our economy. That would be 'socialism' and so we do appreciate your patience and forbearance while we continue to produce more seductive and entertaining technology. You can keep track of your donated food with your cell phone. You can look at pictures of roast turkey while you eat the stale English muffins we brought to the food shelf. Please just relax. We love you. We couldn't live without you. Don't do anything rash. Just say 'No' to drugs. Don't worry, be happy. See you next week, or whenever I remember your necessary suffering or have some junk to give away. God bless."

(Three) Third, the knockout: The Free Market Economy is Free Only When it Includes Every Member of Society.

Look. Let's be real. Let's imagine we are going to design the free market society to drive our economic system in a society that is deemed to be democratic politically, or socially. In other words, our economic system is intended to render economic justice and not be in conflict with social justice. First, let's select a few groups of people to be excluded. Let's keep them out. They will not participate in the work or the wealth of their community or of the greater society. That's a good way to start out, right? OF COURSE NOT UNLESS YOU ARE A HORSE'S ASS. There is no way that anyone remotely sane would claim that the proper way to set up a free market economy is to select some groups of people to be excluded from the market. Why would anyone want to do such a thing? Well, getting into why some people would really want to do that gets us into the field of social psychology, and some people don't even want to accept that "social psychology" exists as real branch of human knowledge. But still, we can discuss how and why people are excluded from our economic system or more precisely from our marketplace.

First, we know that in any industrial enterprise, the value of the goods or services sold is the "value added" by the labor performed. This is what Karl Marx wrote and that is the main reason why capitalists hate Marx. Basically, what Marx implied is that all of the value of an industrial product arises out of the value added by the labor. And, this viewpoint implies that the manager or owner or investor, who is not performing any particular form of visible labor, is adding only a very small "value" to the output of the enterprise. And that implies further that the salary or wages, or money earned by the manager, owner and investor should be comparatively small, approximately the same as the earnings of a worker in the production line. Therefore the socialist and the communist ask, why does such an enormous payment of profit go to the investors, owners and managers? The reason would be, in modern language, the profit TAKEN by the investors, owners and managers is the capitalist transfer payment from the working class to the capitalist class. This is why the workers are poor and the capitalists are rich. Because the capitalists take the money and the government supports the capitalist system that operates according to these rules.

To be fair, being in business does not always work in a manner that allows profits to flow to the capitalists. Some businesses fail, and some managers make mistakes, and sometimes there are changes in the market that are not expected. In fact, every investor knows that investing is a form of gambling and sometimes the gamble is good. Sometimes the demand for a product increases dramatically after production starts, either because the effective demand of the customer public increases (desire combined with money to spend) or demand could increase because the quality is high and the product develops a good reputation. In modern times we sometimes call this "branding" as in "brand names." When a particular "brand" or trade name for a particular product has a good reputation, demand can remain high for years, for decades, and for some products more than a century. This long term of demand for a brand product has occurred for many products since 1900, including breakfast cereals, cookies, peanut butter, and certain types of sandwiches. This has also occurred for machines, such as motor vehicles and household appliances. However, changes in the patterns of competition, including competition on a global scale, are changing the meaning and profitability of the good reputation of a brand name. In fact, many brand names that generated steady profits for decades in part because the products were manufactured in the United States, we all know so well, are no longer manufactured in the United States. In any case, the extreme opposition to "socialism" comes primarily from this almost secret concept discovered and developed by Marx. That is why capitalists endeavor to discredit Marx any way they can, especially by labelling him as a godless man, an atheist who did not believe in family life or moral principles. None of that is true. If any reasonable person reads the writings of Karl Marx they will discover that he formed his opinions of the capitalist ways by observing sweatshops during the 1830's in New York City and Lancaster, England. At that time, workers included children under the age of fourteen, the work day was ten hours or more, six or seven days a week, and if you lost your arm in a machine you were no longer employed and your future life depended entirely on the voluntary charity of churches and individuals. Marx wrote about "political economy" because he was moved by the harsh and unfair living conditions of workers while the capitalists spent their lives counting their money and becoming a patron of the arts. The rich also had a habit as old as history of using some of their money to pay legislators to pass the laws that would keep them rich or make them richer. This is an unwritten right in our capitalist society. Although it is not mentioned anywhere in our Constitution, the capitalists insist that society turns on the unwritten and seldom questioned right to take a profit from the "value added" by the labor of the workers. The capitalists are still addressing that problem with admirable vigor: they are doing everything they can to replace all the workers with machines. Their goal, I think, is to run their factories from their island vacation homes by pushing buttons on a cell phone. They will have to hire engineers and legislators occasionally, but only occasionally. The quirk of the marketplace they have not yet figured out is how will it work when there are no customers.

Let us make the assumption, just for the sake of this examination, that the best free market is a market that includes everyone who is alive. In other words, our definition of "efficiency" for our really free market is not that an industrial operation can be performed with little or no human labor, but quite the opposite. We are going to say that a truly free market is the property of the people, like air, water and soil was the property of the ancient tribes of hunters and gatherers, and further, the truly free and truly efficient market is a marketplace that produces the maximum quantity of effective demand, and that means the maximum number of customers who have desires combined with money to spend. Since the marketplace is actually driven by effective demand, our definition of "efficiency" is the same thing as "maximum effective market demand." And, if maximum effective demand means every member of society is recruited to be an active customer, that means, logically, that a truly free market economy includes every member of society as a participant in the marketplace. Everyone has money, at least enough money to spend to satisfy their most basic and reasonable desires: food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and an internet phone of course, in order to find coffee, pizza, and friends.

A science of poverty as a free-market distortion:

What is poverty? Who benefits from poverty? Is there such a thing as a "perfect" free market? And the most important question of all: What are the things that we do, or might do, that distort the free market model? Let's first consider two extremes, a marketplace where no one is poor, and a marketplace where many people are poor, say 25% of the population. There is always the argument that nothing happens by accident. If some people are poor, it must be because somebody benefits, or believes they benefit from the poverty of others. By this concept and model, poverty does not occur by accident. In fact, there is the very reasonable and simple argument that when anyone "creates wealth" they must also be creating poverty. This is perfectly logical so long as the created wealth is not distributed evenly. This is really a no-brainer. Let's look at our primitive tribe where Mongoman is a great hunter, and he and his friends are all very strong. So, he comes home one afternoon and they are all carrying huge chunks of fresh mastodon. There is enough meat for the clan for a week. There will also be valuable bone, sinew and hide. There are different possibilities as to how this "wealth" is distributed. If the tribe is communist, or Christian (just saying that concepts of justice existed before Jesus) every member of the tribe gets a portion that is reasonable: what you can eat tonight and tomorrow and each clan member, or family, has to cope with the problem of preserving meat for more than forty-eight hours. Another problem is the wolves will be interested. Another pattern of distribution could be uneven distribution by uneven or unequal social status. Mongoman and his friends say that because they are the hunters who did the work of hunting, they get much more of the meat than all the others. This procedure does not take into consideration any thing or any support that other members of the clan provide for Mongoman and his friends. For example, his mother might say: "You asshole! The women of this clan raised you when you were a helpless infant who would have died without our care." The hunters might hear such protests as "I made your shirt" and "I made your shoes" and "I found and chipped the obsidian that provided you with deep-penetrating spears." On and on it goes. Mongoman might hear from his favorite woman: "I did not sleep with you last night, and you will sleep alone again tonight if you act like a selfish pig." This is how we develop the perspective of social justice. It is that in a tribe or a clan, or a nation, everyone can participate and contribute something to the work of the community, and in turn participate in the wealth of the community. But the questions are still haunting us. If the meat (or anything) is distributed evenly, then the occurrence of wealth does not result in an occurrence of poverty. It is only when the wealth is distributed unevenly that some become "rich" and others become "poor." It really is simple arithmetic, but the capitalists and the nobility are manipulative and they work hard to make everyone believe that poverty occurs either because of mysterious "economics" or because of the natural differences between good people, the rich, and bad people, the poor. The truth, so intensively resisted and concealed by the rich, the nobility, and the capitalists, is that what happens in the marketplace is planned. Nothing in the marketplace really happens by accident. It all begins with the controlled uneven distribution of the wealth. The unevenness or inequality in society does not occur by chance or by nature; it occurs by human will. Should total wealth be distributed by a standard of exact and mathematical precision? I don't think so. There should be some reasonable standards by which different types of wealth are distributed to different people. For example, I have a neighbor who should not possess a set of loudspeakers. But it's okay if he gets food. We have large, expensive science laboratories in our society, and they are distributed --- or made available --- to scientists with a good reputation, not to a motorcycle gang, unless the scientist is a member of a motorcycle gang.

The questions still haunt us. What is poverty? Who benefits from poverty? Is there such a thing as a "perfect" free market? And the most important question of all: What are the things that we do, or might do, that distort the free market model? Let's look again at two extremes, a marketplace where no one is poor, and a marketplace where many people are poor, say 25% of the population. My position is that the creation of poverty, the creation of members of society (if we include all who breathe) who have no money or very little money, results in a very large and unacceptable DISTORTION OF THE FREE MARKET. Why do I take that position? Why would poverty, which many people argue is a "natural" outcome of any economy, be an unacceptable distortion of the free market? The answer is simple: because it is a deviation from rational distribution of the wealth that is the result of a willful intent, not the result of natural forces beyond human control. Getting back to the question of the percentage of poor, most would agree that having 25% or one-fourth of the population be poor would be a significant problem or "distortion" of the free market. The driving force of effective demand would be drastically reduced while simultaneously excluding a fourth or the people from participation in the marketplace. It certainly does not seem like something we want. But then, if only 5% of the people are excluded, poor, unemployed, and unable to make purchases to meet their basic needs, well that just goes to show us. Show us what? What it does show us is that we designed our economy based on very old and stale punitive religious doctrines. And we have based our economic model on a false doctrine that workers need to be motivated to work by a form of torture. The workers who have been "laid off" or who are not currently needed by a capitalist and investors is just a failure. He or she has failed to "find work" to sell his or her labor in the labor market, and so they get the result that we know as "poverty." This was the foolish concept invented by Adam Smith, that a worker is like a merchant who sells their labor instead of selling objects that are "merchandise." Thus, when there is no demand for their labor, they make no sale and they suffer the humiliation of a businessman who has "failed" to produce a profit for himself and his investors. That is financial justice, according to the capitalist. But it is nonsense if society is not a factory, not an industrial corporation. We know that society is not an industrial corporation. The goal of society is not to exploit the labor of workers and extract the transfer payment that we call "profit." The goal of our society --- we said earlier --- is to be "efficient" by including everyone as participants in the marketplace, in the free market of abundance and common trade by means of money. If our goal is to include everyone in the economy and in the marketplace, so that the true, natural demand for basic needs is allowed to operate, as the actual needs of the truly free market, then any occurrence or process that removes the effective demand of a participant is an "unnatural" distortion of the free market. Let's look at this from a slightly different angle. There are many forms of market distortions that we accept, even promote. Sometimes they are called "subsidies" and sometimes they are called "tax breaks."

For example, in the 19th century when the people and the government wanted to improve the transportation of industrial goods, raw minerals, and agricultural products, they saw that the development of railroads would accomplish a dramatic improvement in the transportation of all such goods. Therefore, the government of the people and by the people GAVE huge quantities of territory to the capitalists, technicians and inventors and the investors who made a commitment to build the railroad machines and the railroad tracks. That was one of the biggest government subsidies of all time. It was welfare for industry and welfare for capitalists. It was a very large interference in the "free market" and it was a very large distortion of the free market. Far more private capital would have been required if the people did not give the land to the "entrepreneurs" and as a result the railroads would have taken much longer to construct. The federal government also granted lands to "pioneers" who wanted to develop agricultural enterprise on the land from which the Native Americans had been removed by armed force. The federal government and state governments also have granted "mineral rights" to investors for the purposes of mining operations and extracting useful minerals and profits for the rich. The "investors" and "entrepreneurs" --- also known as capitalists --- are so accustomed to be GIVEN the wealth of the nation they have actually asked state legislatures to pass laws stating that a property owner who is a farmer or home owner only owns the top twenty-four inches of the land, and the water rights and mineral rights below that level are public property, which can be "granted" or "sold" to the "mining companies." One thing we need to keep in mind about mining companies: although mining is a risky business, all miners are in the business of mining money. A miner is a gambler, and they prefer to gamble with your money, not theirs.

We distort the free market by having the "Federal Reserve Bank" set interest rates, and by our home mortgage system that is not any more natural than an alternative system that rewarded workers for saving. Most economists and many of the citizens of our nation can see clearly that our economic system is based on controlling the populace by placing them all in debt at every opportunity. That is why banks mail credit card offers to people who are not able to make monthly payments, because they can impose penalties and usurious interest rates and thereby extract a "profit" for their performance of the hard labor of keeping records. Insurance companies do something similar. Because of advances in computer technology and mathematical algorithms, the tasks performed by an entire insurance company, hundreds or thousands of people sitting in cubicles or around long tables drinking coffee, can now be completed by one computer and three keyboard operators. Thus, we have one of the most outrageous forms of "makework" subsidies in the practice of paying thousands of employees of insurance companies for adding nothing of value to the economic product of the marketplace. The insurance payments for valid insurance claims certainly help maintain our marketplace and economy, but they can be accurately and promptly disbursed by automation. That insurance payment process could be completed similar to a "self-checkout" at a warehouse store. Most insurance company employees perform no useful labor that could not be performed by a computer or an "electronic robot." And, that robot is being assembled as you read.

I could go on but every economist and financier knows that what is written here is correct. Our economic system and our marketplace --- ask any academic economist --- is not necessarily "natural" or "free." Every economy or marketplace is the product of human design, or the product of a series of human decisions. The marketplace is the product of the willful decisions, what people with power want and what people with power choose, and there are other choices. We could have a truly free market economy and we could include everyone in order to avoid the market distortion that is caused by poverty and by choosing to exclude some people from the marketplace.

One last thing. Why do we allow people to be excluded from the marketplace, to be "unemployed" and to be "poor?" The reason is because the powerful rich are either bad selfish people or surprisingly stupid. Maybe both. They really believe that it is good for society to have poverty. They believe that working people need to be motivated to work by aversive treatment. In other words, they believe that workers must be punished for wanting higher wages. And the best and most effective punishment, to be inflicted upon the workers by the capitalists, and with the complicity of the government, is to impose on the workers a period of exclusion, a period of poverty and humiliation. Why is that a benefit for society? It is not a benefit for society really, but the foolish capitalists really believe that the effect of this punishment by exclusion and humiliation is to MAKE WAGES LOWER, and LOWER WAGES is the true God of the selfish atheistic capitalists. They do not believe in God, and they do not believe in social justice and they do not believe in families. Their one and only divinity is LOWER WAGES.

All we have to do to test the God of the capitalist is try a different approach. All we have to do is set up an "efficient" marketplace where no one is excluded and every member of society gets to exercise their natural and reasonable force of "effective demand" and then we will not have poverty. Our marketplace will not be distorted. Our marketplace will be driven by the more natural and effective forces of everyone in the market, with no one forced by human design into a humiliated class that is excluded from the work and wealth of the community.