Time for a freer market?

“My fear is that today the government will be forever changing the face of the American free market. Because I believe so strongly in the principles of the free market and the belief in freedom, I will be opposing this bill.” Gresham Barrett (R - South Carolina)

Perhaps the current deadlock in the States is a blessing in disguise. The US affords corporations the inviolable rights of persons, and therefore it is unsurprising that corporate welfare has been part of the entente between government and big business.

However, the real cause for surprise is that many policy makers seem oblivious. People such as Congressman Barrett really believe in free markets - and that annual corporate welfare is estimated at around $92bn seems thus far to have escaped their notice.

But corporate welfare is the elephant in the room of free market ideology. Capitalism has not really been based on free markets. We have rarely seen reduced barriers to market entry or perfected price information - two prerequisites of a genuinely free market. What capitalism has achieved is a reduction in the restraints upon corporations under some supposed abstraction of freedom, but often at the cost of competition, entrepreneurship and innovation.

In fact, US big business promoting free markets is reminiscent of the way the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia promoted austere Islamic piety from the casinos of Monaco. One of the results of his hypocrisy was a surge in support for the militants who actually believed the stuff Fahd promoted, and who decried the Sauds' hypocrisy - young Bin Laden for example.

So it could be that this congressional wrestling match, which necessarily brings policy makers face to face with a serious contradiction in the practice and theory of supposed free market capitalism, actually results in a genuine liberalisation, where the US reasseses the contest between corporate, individual and community freedoms.

So in fact it may be congressmen such as Mr Barrett who are "changing the face of the American free market" by rejecting the bail out - and it could be a change for the better.