Mike Konczal

Freedom from the Market by Mike Konczal is a clearly written but thorough examination of the ways in which capitalism is unable and unwilling to make life better and more equitable for all.

Each chapter examines a particular area (land, health, education, etc) and shows how the country has tried from its inception to provide for most of its citizens and how, particularly in the last several decades, market capitalism has undermined those benefits and offered some weak counter that inevitably widens the gap between the haves and the have nots.

The history here is well researched and accurate, as is the assessment of market capitalism. If a faux "former economics teacher" claims otherwise, ignore them, they have been just about everything in their pursuit of 1-starring any book that leans even a little left. I have no doubt there are likely some minor points glossed over, but I have yet to read a book that can lay claim to 100% accuracy in both fact and interpretation. This book is as close as any other to that ideal.

I would recommend this to any reader, regardless of where you currently stand on these issues, as long as you read it with an open mind. You may not agree with everything but you won't be able to honestly claim the history, theory, or application is objectively wrong. Your disagreement, if there is still any, will be about the subjective ideas for what we need to do now.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (más)

“Freedom requires keeping us from the markets”

“That the market can’t provide genuine security against poverty, sickness, old age and disability is something that is understood but not readily accepted, as we keep looking to the market and local communities to solve it,” says Mike Konczal in Freedom From The Market. We know it doesn’t work, so we double down and try even harder. And insist it is the only way. And all this despite the will of Americans themselves.

In this remarkably concise, systematic and direct book, Konczal shows that America has always been about free services, but that capitalism as practiced is incapable of providing them. The resulting inequality is leading to unrest as the pendulum has swung too far. The market offers only the opposite of freedom.

His chapters examine the history of access to services and their help in leveling up to a decent quality of life. They examine Land, Time, Life, Security, Care, Health, Economy and Education. In every case, the USA actively sought to distribute goods and services to all, only to have Conservatives roll back and terminate such programs. He says of his research: “Free programs and keeping things free from the market are as American as apple pie.”

For example, education used to be free. Starting in 1862 with land grant universities, the federal government sought to offer a higher education to all comers in an effort grow a smarter and more skilled populace that would be more affluent and self-reliant. It was only in the Reagan era that states began cutting those subsidies, causing tuitions to skyrocket and an entire industry of student loans to dominate the lives of students. This had the effect of keeping them away from benevolent paths as they needed (and need) big money fast, and it is now keeping parents from funding their children’s educations as they still have to deal with their own crippling loans.

Similarly, Americans benefitted massively from grants of land – 160 acre plots – to (pretty much) all comers in exchange for living on them and working them. This gave the agricultural middle class a big boost, and the land became the basis of their family wealth and legacy.

The biggest concentrated push away from the market was Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration in the 1930s and 40s. Facing the depths of the worst depression ever, caused by the collapse of the stock market and the banks, FDR built out a series of programs to put a floor under all Americans. From public employment until they could find jobs to Social Security for all when they reached age 65, FDR took America towards the kinder, gentler status it had constantly fought for since its founding. FDR specifically aimed for “freedom from dependency on the markets.” It led to an unprecedented era of support for Americans, and the biggest addition to their wealth and wellbeing right through until the 1980s. In Konczal’s analysis: “The dislocations and insecurity caused by the expansion of capitalism give the government a justification to expand to try and address these problems, at the expense of civil and private institutions.”

FDR’s successor, Harry Truman, kept the flame alive by proposing Medicare For All, in 1946. It was beaten back, and took 30 more years before it was enacted by Lyndon Johnson’s administration – but only for seniors again. The Johnson administration was also the zenith of government activism on behalf of Americans. It was the era of auto safety, exhaust restrictions and better mileage. Senate committees were constantly shaming corporate greed. Mergers were denied. Drugs got a much closer look, and so did farm production and food safety. Female equality, voting rights and access for the disabled all flexed their new wings. Nixon then implemented pollution penalties.

Konczal shows the rollercoaster rise and fall of freedom from markets throughout US history. Starting in the late 1800s, the courts suddenly decided that government could not interfere in markets or contracts, damaging labor in favor of companies. “Freedom of contract” came out of nowhere to become a (bogus) foundational right in the courts. Courts affirmed companies’ right to pay workers in scrip they printed themselves, instead of US dollars. Scrip was valid only at the company store, where outrageous prices were set by the company. Conservative courts ruled it was absurd that they couldn’t do that.

In the early 1900s, Isaac Rubinow laid out the principles of free and social insurance. He was a Russian immigrant, a doctor. He was the kind of doctor who gave his own patients cash if they could not pay him. He left medicine for economics and statistics and became the American authority on social insurance worldwide. His argument against the Conservatives who opposed freedom from markets targeted their beliefs directly: If “freedom from anxiety as to the future must be demoralizing, then the character of the rich, who have no such worries, must already be destroyed. If being able to meet human needs must necessarily weaken our spirits to an equal degree, then all of human progress has been immoral.”

The problem, as Rubinow analyzed it, and as has become clear and obvious since, is that private insurance and private charities and nonprofits simply do not have the ability to reach everyone. Private pensions were businesses that needed to profit from their insureds. In Rubinow’s time, private pension funds ripped of customers so that as few as 10% actually collected anything at all. Charities could target emergencies and disasters, but even combined, they could not cast a net as widely as the federal government could. It was just never going to work, as we see on a daily basis today. The market does not take care of any issue. The country cannot rely on the market to do its job, caring for Americans.

Social insurance seems to work best when it is universal. The bureaucracy needed to monitor means testing, make denials and fight for them in appeals is a waste. Medicare should be for all. Pensions as well. A universal basic income would raise all boats as long as it was actually universal.

It was Ronald Reagan who turned the tables on Americans. Suddenly, government was the problem, not the solution. Tuition was an “investment” by the student in him or herself, and not for the government to have a hand in. Americans were suddenly welfare queens, lazy slobs who lived off the state. Even the mentally ill were tossed out of their institutions, and eventually ended up filling prisons instead. Prison became the number one institution for the mentally ill in America.

Americans could see the attack on higher education coming. As governor of California, Reagan was literally at war with the state’s universities. The protest movements of the 60s were his worst nightmare. He sent in paramilitary police. He accused the universities of hosting wild sex parties, on taxpayer dollars. As president, he choked off funds to the states, which choked off funds to the schools, forcing them to find other sources, namely their students. Tuition went from $650 to tens of thousands. Food pantries began appearing on campuses. Full time jobs became a critical necessity to stay in school. Volunteer work or work in nonprofits fell by the wayside, limiting students’ experience.

For those who could pay for it, schools began laying out the red carpet. All kinds of amenities became available as schools sought to attract the wealthy as much as the bright. Students became customers, whose every whim merited serious consideration. The result is a cheapening of universities and the degrees they confer, as well as impoverishment for non-rich students, often lasting their lifetimes. University degrees are no longer a ticket out of minimum wage lives.

For Konczal, it all boiled down to property rights. Reagan made property the fundamental freedom. Everything bent over to bow to property. Shareholders ascended, mergers blossomed, antitrust actions faded, banking was allowed to get totally out of control (again), and the average American began a long ignominious slide into irrelevance. The only thing that mattered was property, and the “masters of the universe” who leveraged it became American heroes. Wall Street and banking became the number one goal of college graduates. The poor became the enemy within. The market dictated ruthless efficiency, as if all Americans were simply commodities that might or might not fit its goals.

In case after case, chapter after chapter, Konczal shows the unintended consequences of keeping Americans subject to markets. It has basically never benefited them, and always hurt them. The manipulators reap fortunes at the expense of the average citizen. At some point, the pendulum will have swung too far and begin its return to the center. Konczal thinks he sees that now, as a new generation of activist politicians begins to make itself heard, to the great enthusiasm and relief of the voters who get the opportunity to elect such people. Despite the rantings of those in power, it has always been what Americans wanted, and they have always been better off for it.

David Wineberg… (más)