Sheldon Richman a USA political writer and academic, editor of The Freeman magazine and renowned for his advocacy of left-libertarianism or market anarchism, has published an article on the US presidential candidate’s limited variations on their ‘Corporatist Theme’. In the article Richmond states, “So the presidential campaign is shaping up as a contest between a Democrat who says we had a free market from 2001 through 2008 and a Republican who agrees—he says “[w]e are only inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy.” You can’t cease to be something you never were. Thus  Barack Obama claims and Mitt Romney implicitly concedes that the free market 1) has existed and 2) therefore presumably created the housing and financial debacle. This bodes ill for advocates of liberty and voluntary exchange. Notice what will happen if this framing is widely accepted: Genuinely freed markets won’t make the list of feasible options. That will leave us with mere variations on a statist theme, namely, corporatism. …and the winner will be: Corporatism. (That is, the use of government force primarily to benefit the well-connected business elite.) The loser? The people, who would benefit from freedom and freed markets—markets void of privileges and arbitrary decrees. That’s what maximizes consumer and worker bargaining power and enhances general living standards.”

 

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