Markets Know Best

Yeah, keep believing that until everybody's dead. I mean that from the bottom of my heart; "markets know best" is exactly the paradigm that has lead us to the race to the bottom we're now collectively involved in. "Markets know best" is the ideology that will prevent us from ever doing anything about the environmental and social disasters that are looming right around the corner.

_{source: Pxfuel}

Markets don't know diddly-squat and have the morals of a brick. I wish more people accepted this simple truth. We all know it's true, yet somehow it's been cemented in our collective psyche that markets really do know best. Well, maybe not best, but better than the government anyway; for decades we've seen trust in the government decline, and a push to leave more and more things that were once considered to be a collective responsibility to be guarded and regulated by the government of, by and for the people, in the private hands of market actors. Things that were of, by and for all people, like telecommunication, healthcare, gas, electricity, education and many more, are now "governed" by some invisible hand. Governments are slow, unresponsive and not efficient, so why not leave these all important aspects of our lives in the entrepreneurial hands of private businesses, so they can benefit from their decisiveness and efficiency. Surely prices will go down and services will become better; that's how markets work, right?

If you've been conscious at all since the 1980s, you know that's all baloney. The one country in the developed world that doesn't have some form of universal healthcare, has the highest healthcare costs per capita. That's because that country, America, is the one that beliefs the lie in the title of this post most; pharmaceuticals and insurance are left in the hands of the markets. Markets know nothing, but the humans and institutions operating in the markets know one thing and one thing only: gotta make a profit or I won't survive. That's what we've all been lead to believe, because it's true in a world governed by the lie that markets know best. I can already hear libertarians and anarcho-capitalists complain about the fact that there are no true free markets, and that if only the government would step aside everything would be peachy; I have no time to debunk that delusion right now other than to say that in no time in the entire human history have markets been free, and I'll add that free markets are antithetical to democracy, and that democracy, not markets, is the best guarantee for maximum individual freedom. I say "maximum" because absolute freedom simply does not exist if you do not own an uninhabited island where you live all by yourself.

Recently health-insurance stocks surged after Joe Biden's huge bounce-back on super Tuesday. The headline on CNBC read: "Dow surges more than 600 points at the open as Biden Super Tuesday victories boost health care stocks." I've been alive for more than a half century and I'll share a truth with you that I've seen all that time all over the world; whenever and wherever a progressive leftist political party threatens to claim power, stock markets tank. That's ALWAYS true. That's not reflecting wisdom on the part of the markets, that's reflecting fear on the part of the humans profiting from the markets. Health care stocks were not doing too well just two weeks ago, when the prospect of a Bernie Sanders candidacy seemed a lot closer than it does now. Sanders supports healthcare for all, Biden does not. In this time of world wide panic about the corona virus it's clearer than ever before that healthcare should be a collective, shared responsibility instead of a strictly personal one. The belief that markets know best is making the situation much more precarious than it should be; how many people continue to go to work despite not feeling well, how many people don't go to the doctor for a check-up because they fear the bill they'll get in the mail? Sure, markets know best, just look at the price gouging that's going on right now: "Amazon removes hundreds of thousands of ‘high-priced offers’ amid coronavirus price gouging."

We don't need more privatization, and we don't need smaller government; we need a government we can trust, regardless of how big or small it is. That means we need politicians who understand that markets know diddly-squat and who are not beholden to market entities by way of accepting corporate donations. "Markets know best" has produced "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" and created the reality that there are more corporate lobbyists than government aides populating the floors of the United States Congress. The surge in healthcare stocks reflects the sigh of relief by the lobbyists for the healthcare industry. That should worry you to no end, and is yet another reason for everyone planning on voting for Biden to reconsider.

_{Healthcare Industry profits from Biden's Super Tuesday surge}

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