Do you believe in the free market? Quick, yes or no, do you or don’t you?

In reading the Washington Post’s embarrassing paean to former Chilean dictator and torturer-in-chief Augusto Pinochet – it is a national embarrassment and disgrace that the leading newspaper in the nation’s capital would be so out-of-touch with opinion throughout the civilized world -- it gets sickening to continue seeing the right wing’s straw-man arguments surrounding the term “free market.” They use it not as a legitimate description, but as a mantra, a code word, as if there is an on-off, yes-no switch that goes into operation: either it’s a free market or it’s not. The additional implication, which is a flat-out lie, is that conservatives are “for” the free market, and liberals are “against” the free market.

The real difference between liberals and conservatives, and people like Washington Post Editor Fred Hiatt know this perfectly well, is a lot closer to this: considering the role of Federal, state and local governments (very roughly), liberals are for an economic system that is 70% free market, while conservatives would prefer something more like, say, 72%. The problem is that the conservatives are so in love with non-free-market armed forces, or rather showing how tough we are all over the world by deploying or otherwise threatening people with our armed forces, and with non-free-market police and prisons at home, and with subsidies for oil companies and low taxes for the rich and the gigantic interest that must be paid on the added Federal debt they cavalierly create with such policies, that they create a system that’s more like 65% free market. In other words, when someone like George W. Bush is in charge, the free-market part of our economy actually decreases, certainly compared to a moderate liberal like Bill Clinton who actually reduced the size of the Federal Government as a percentage of the gross national product. Is Bechtel and Halliburton reaping in billions from no-bid contracts issued by the Defense Department an example of the “free market”? I doubt that Friedrich Hayek would think so.

Actually, liberals, believing as the overwhelming majority of Americans believe that most of the insurance component of medical care should be handled for the benefit of all citizens by the single institution that with our collective consent can do that, i.e, our government – that’s our government – in order to insure that no American is ever financially destroyed by a health catastrophe in the family, would probably be happy to go to the conservatives' 65% free market model if the health insurance crisis could be solved -- along with, of course, adoption of a grown-up foreign policy for fighting terrorism to supplant the reigning middle-school-playground version of the neo-conservatives.

Here is how the U.S. Information Agency, obviously trying to be non-controversial, describes the U.S. economy to the rest of the world.

This emphasis on private ownership arises, in part, from American beliefs about personal freedom. From the time the nation was created, Americans have feared excessive government power, and they have sought to limit government's authority over individuals -- including its role in the economic realm. In addition, Americans generally believe that an economy characterized by private ownership is likely to operate more efficiently than one with substantial government ownership.
Why? When economic forces are unfettered, Americans believe, supply and demand determine the prices of goods and services. Prices, in turn, tell businesses what to produce; if people want more of a particular good than the economy is producing, the price of the good rises. That catches the attention of new or other companies that, sensing an opportunity to earn profits, start producing more of that good. On the other hand, if people want less of the good, prices fall and less competitive producers either go out of business or start producing different goods. Such a system is called a market economy. A socialist economy, in contrast, is characterized by more government ownership and central planning. Most Americans are convinced that socialist economies are inherently less efficient because government, which relies on tax revenues, is far less likely than private businesses to heed price signals or to feel the discipline imposed by market forces.
There are limits to free enterprise, however. Americans have always believed that some services are better performed by public rather than private enterprise. For instance, in the United States, government is primarily responsible for the administration of justice, education (although there are many private schools and training centers), the road system, social statistical reporting, and national defense. In addition, government often is asked to intervene in the economy to correct situations in which the price system does not work. It regulates "natural monopolies," for example, and it uses antitrust laws to control or break up other business combinations that become so powerful that they can surmount market forces. Government also addresses issues beyond the reach of market forces. It provides welfare and unemployment benefits to people who cannot support themselves, either because they encounter problems in their personal lives or lose their jobs as a result of economic upheaval; it pays much of the cost of medical care for the aged and those who live in poverty; it regulates private industry to limit air and water pollution; it provides low-cost loans to people who suffer losses as a result of natural disasters; and it has played the leading role in the exploration of space, which is too expensive for any private enterprise to handle.

How many conservatives would really disagree with this? And how many liberals? It’s in the emphasis, and even though the different emphasis between conservative and liberal philosophies of governance makes a huge difference in the quality of life for Americans, nobody on the left proposes a command economy like Soviet Communism, and few quarrel with the central role of private property and free markets for most economic relationships. Identifying something as “free market” or not is not an exercise in a digital yes-no/on-off world. There are many ways we should move beyond the middle-school version of reality that the right wing perpetuates – and actually, of course, that’s really a gross insult to the middle-schoolers I have known.