Tornado Alley (PROG)

[SilverSurfer]

here's the myth,,,,

"The “free market” is a myth. A “free market” is defined as a market with few if any barriers to entry and exit (a barrier to exit immediately becomes a barrier to entry!) with prices and products determined by demand.
In every “market” the large players erect every conceivable barrier to entry/exit as quickly as possible – a “free market” is one NOT dominated by few large entities whose pricing/profit objectives determine price and product levels irregardless of the demand in the product markets serviced. The few large entities prices will all move in lock-step to extract as much profit as possible from each consumer AND ELIMINATE COMPETITION BETWEEN THEMSELVES. Consolidation is far better than competition for extracting maximum profits.
To expect so called “free markets” to set correct prices or levels for anything is currently a very dicey proposition (do ya feel lucky sucker?) and if they are to be used for this purpose they must be highly regulated and effectively monitored to promote and sustain real competition in deed as well as word.
Markets, as they currently exist, have only one value- dollars. Dollars measure everything that business does. Human and social values (morality) can never be measured or expressed in terms of dollars – therefore they can never be introduced into the equations that business uses to determine action.
Morality has three positions:
Moral, which means you know what it is and you do it
Immoral, which means you know what it is and you don’t do it. And.
Amoral, which means you never take morality into consideration in the first place!
There can be no better definition of amorality than someone for whom dollars are the only and determining value considered before decision/action.
Markets, corporations and most businesses only consider dollars before decision/action and therefore are AMORAL. This is true regardless of the personal religious piety of the players. Personal “feelings” have no place in business decisions only dollars count.
Therefore all “markets” are not free but manipulated for a small number of large businesses and, markets are amoral and have no, zero, ability to consider, respond to or act in response to a single human or social value – unless playing to that human/social value happens to be profitable in terms of dollars.
Markets are neither free nor moral. I think we would be kidding ourselves to leave socially or humanly impacting business activities strictly to any unregulated and unmonitored “market” much less a mythical “free market”."

http://moslereconomics.com/links/