THE RECORD
February 26, 2003

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

One of the most used buzzwords, or rather buzz expressions of our would be corporate dictators is "market economy," which is supposed to create a new world of wealth never seen before. Certainly not seen in our past under godless socialist governments, who went out of their way to regulate economic activities and prevented the angels of prosperity from descending on the downtrodden human race. According to their propaganda this mythical market economy is supposed to bring on worldwide democracy and happiness under the theory of "competitive equilibrium"

To achieve this Utopia, big business has bought up virtually all university economics departments around the globe over the past 30 years, and uses wholly owned political parties as branches to promote the theory. They have the USAF poised to bomb any society to smithereens that does not subscribe to their view willingly.

The main problem with the present version of so called "market economy" is that it doesn't exist and could never exist under our current, so called capitalist, economic system where virtually all life is controlled by the fraudulent measuring stick of the GDP, the fraudulent, deregulated money creating system and the fraudulent stock and commodity markets where a relatively few major players control the values and prices.

The only way market economy can develop and remain sustained is where all the players and participants are equal. Which means, that the demands of a wealthy few can not overrule the needs of the poor millions.

Like many older people, I grew up in such a market system in Eastern Europe under the dirty thirties depression. Everybody was poor and were glad to have some decent meals on the table once in a while. The farmers brought their chickens, eggs, milk, butter, firewood and vegetables to the marketplace and then the haggling started. My Mother was a great haggler and many times, even as a small boy, I used to saunter away, I was so embarrassed by her tactics, but, although we were dirt poor like the rest, she saw to it that we ate well and that haggling was a way of life.

Such scenes still exist in many parts of the world, but now, under the neo liberal ideology forced on the globe, a multinational will go to the marketplace, buy up all the goods, put the farmers out of business and steal their lands to control the market and then sock it to the public. Has anybody seen lower prices in the supermarkets since our phony "free trade" agreements with the rulers of the world ?

When our Premier and his brain-dead caucus talk about market economy they don't mean the balanced exchange of goods and services between human beings, but increased profits and share values for big business, flowing out of the province and country without any benefits to the citizens, while the GDP reports lots of "growth" and the food bank lines reach around blocks.

The reasons are obvious, but never mentioned to the gullible public. The real market economy is on the stock, futures and money markets, where the intent is not to lower, but to increase costs and prices. The sole purpose of the executives of big business is to have a good showing in the next quarterly report. If the company's profits come in below expectations it is goodbye to the executives and many times to the company.

The stock markets reward only companies that raise prices and profits, regardless who or how many get hurt, which makes the promise of lower costs and prices to society a rotten lie. Whenever companies hire workers their stocks go down. When they fire masses, their stocks rise, or even double in value, as it happened to IBM after they fired 60,000.

NAFTA has cost at least 5 million jobs in the three victim countries, while a certain small, aristocratic percentage keeps on raking in the profits. This is the wealth creation they promised, albeit never mentioning the number of beneficiaries.

So, how can this fraudulent system bring wealth and prosperity to the public, when the rules are removed and the predators are let loose in the streets. We'll see when the great market economy experiment of the Campbell government in our forests starts closing down the mills across the province .
Why does big business always demand deregulations and more and more rights of exploitation? Let me end up with an ancient Sumerian proverb translated from one of their clay tablets: "In a town without watchdogs the wolf is the overseer." And we know who they are and what they want.

Copyright (c) 2003, West's International