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"markets"</title></head><body>
<div><font face="Verdana">Walter Russell Mead. <br>
<i>Mortal Splendor : The American Empire in Transition</i>. Pp.
35-36. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987.</font><br>
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"Regulation was introduced into the American economy to shore up the
market,</font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana">not to weaken it."</font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana">===========</font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana"><br>
"The other great tenet of liberalism is its faith in the operation
of the market. This may surprise some contemporary conservatives, who
criticize liberals on the grounds that they wish to stifle the market
by excessive regulation, but such a view oversimplifies the liberal
position.<br>
<br>
"As Gary Wills pointed out in his<i> Nixon Agonistes,</i> the
American liberal sees the market as a metaphor for all of life, not
merely the means of economic change. Just as in the free market of
Adam Smith an invisible hand seems to direct the individual exchanges
to produce, in the end, the greatest good for the greatest number, so
does a free political market produce the best political leaders, and a
free ideological market produce the best ideas."<br>
<br>
"Historically, the economic market led not to the development of
more and more small businesses in a freer and freer environment, but
to the development of the trusts, great monopolistic corporations.
Once the market had been invaded by trusts, it could no longer be
considered free in the old sense. The trusts could and did use their
great power to crush competition, rather than by 'competing honestly'
with it. Railroads had a monopoly on transporting farm produce from
the Middle West to the East: this meant they could charge whatever
freight rates they liked They did not need to fear competition in the
short run, because the lines were prohibitively expensive and took
years to build.<br>
<br>
"Those espousing a radical approach might have called for
nationalization of the railroads, saying that the market had failed
and needed to be replaced by the state. A lasses-faire conservative
would have done nothing, believing that nothing could improve the
situation but the invisible hand. The liberal response was neither to
do nothing nor to abandon the market; liberals regulated the
railroads. Where the market did not provide enough competition, the
government would step in: it would prevent or regulate the monopolies
that seemed to gain power over the dynamics of the market.<br>
<br>
"The liberal view of the market holds that various forces that act
on the market distort it, and that the intervention of an outside
force is needed to restore balance. Regulation was introduced into the
American economy to shore up the market, not to weaken it.</font><br>
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<div><font face="Verdana">"Liberals also recognized that the market
inevitably creates short-term injustices and suffering. The business
cycle of a market economy normally alternates between booms and busts
- recessions and recoveries, in the euphemisms of today. Once again,
liberals seek a compromise between abandoning the unemployed and other
victims of a slump to their own devices and demolishing the market
entirely."</font><br>
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color="#000000">====================================</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000">"Now we have a way of
dividing America."<br>
<br>
Newt Gingrich, quoted in Greider, William (p. 276)<br>
<i>Who will tell the people.</i> 1992. Simon &
Schuster</font><br>
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