The Market is a God that sucks

Markets must rule, some right-wing prophets tell us, because of "globalization," because the moral weight of the entire world somehow demands it.
The new god makes great demands on us, and its demands must be appeased.
None can be shielded from its will.
The welfare of AFDC mothers must be entrusted unhesitatingly to its mercies.
Workers of every description must learn its discipline, must sacrifice all to achieve flexibility, to create shareholder value.
The professional, the intellectual, the manager must each shed their pride and own up to their flawed, lowly natures, must acknowledge their impotence and insensibility before its divine logic.
We put our health care system in its invisible hands, and to all appearances it botches the job.
Yet the faith of the believers is not shaken.
We deregulate the banking industry. Deregulate the broadcasters. Deregulate electricity. Halt antitrust. Make plans to privatize Social Security and to privatize the public schools.
And to those who worry about the cost of all this, the market's disciples speak of mutual funds, of IPOs, of online trading, of early retirement. All we have to do is believe.
Then, one fine day, you check in at Ameritrade and find that your tech portfolio is off 90 percent. Your department at work has been right-sized, meaning you spend a lot more time at the office-without getting a raise.
You have one kid in college to the tune of $30,000 a year, another with no health insurance because she's working as a temp.
Or maybe you lost your job because they can do it cheaper in Alabama or Mexico.

That's when it dawns on you: The market is a god that sucks.
Yes, it cashed a few out at the tippy top, piled up the loot of the world at their feet, delivered shiny Lexuses into the driveways of their ten-bedroom suburban chateaux.
But for the rest of us the very principles that make the market the object of D'Souza's worship, of Gilder's awestruck piety, are the forces that conspire to make life shitty in a million ways great and small.
The market is the reason our housing is so expensive.
It is the reason our public transportation is lousy.
It is the reason our cities sprawl idiotically all across the map.
It is the reason our word processing programs stink and our prescription drugs cost more than anywhere else.
In order that a fortunate few might enjoy a kind of prosperity unequaled in human history, the rest of us have had to abandon ourselves to a lifetime of casual employment, to unquestioning obedience within an ever-more arbitrary and despotic corporate regime, to medical care available on a maybe/maybe-not basis, to a housing market interested in catering only to the fortunate.
In order for the libertarians of Orange County to enjoy the smug sleep of the true believer, the thirty millions among whom they live must join them in the dark.
But it is not enough to count the ways in which the market sucks.
This is a deity of spectacular theological agility, supported by a priesthood of millions: journalists, admen, politicians, Op-Ed writers, think-tankers, cyberspace scrawlers, Sunday morning talk-show libertarians, and, of course, bosses, all of them united in the conviction that, no matter what, the market can't be held responsible.
When things go wrong only we are to blame.
After all, they remind us, every step in the economic process is a matter of choice.
Virtually any deed can be excused by this logic.
The stock market, in recent years a scene of no small amount of deceit, misinformation, and manipulation, can be made to seem quite benign when the high priests roll up their sleeves.
Since those lovable little guys acted of their own free will when they invested in Lucent, PMC Sierra, and Cisco, today there is no claim they can make that deserves a hearing. What has happened is their fault and theirs alone.
Free to choose is a painfully ironic slogan for the market order.
While markets do indeed sometimes provide a great array of consumer choices, the clear intention of much of the chatter about technology, "globalization," and the "New Economy" is, in fact, to deny us any choice at all.

Liberally taken from

"Off-shoring and the Free Market"

Bosley, John