Word Soup

Just curious. Is this an example of the "free market" at work?

The U.S. House of Representatives is discussing an auto industry request to set in motion at least $25 billion in government-backed loans to help beleaguered U.S. manufacturers retool plants to make more efficient cars and trucks, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said on Tuesday.

In other words, automakers now want government funds to upgrade their plants to produce the energy efficient vehicles they should have been producing for decades, but didn't want to.

Is this their beloved free market at work?

U.S. Democrats on Tuesday criticized the multimillion-dollar pay packages awarded to the former chief executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at a time when taxpayers could foot a massive bill for the companies' bailout. In a joint letter to Fannie and Freddie's regulator, senators Charles Schumer of New York and Jack Reed of Rhode Island said the combined pay and bonus packages of about $24 million should be revised.

In other words, using taxpayer funds to prop up companies whose greasy math catches up with them, then using additional taxpayer funds to ensure incompetent CEOs will be paid ridiculous severance packages.

I'm so confused. I thought all these free market fans believed in no-government-involvement industry Darwinism. A wild jungle of open and robust competition where Government does little more than protect our borders from terrorists and evil Mexicans, but leaves industry completely alone to be, well, TOTALLY AWESOME.

Yet here we learn that government involvement is suddenly a-ok as-so-long as it involves throwing taxpayer dollars at companies should they fuck up on an epic scale. The same taxpayer dollars that must never, ever be spent on human beings and infrastructure, because that's just stupid and evil. Spending that same money on bombs is ok.

This "free market" philosophy is just so gosh darned complicated. I mean golly, you almost get the impression that people who yammer ceaselessly about the free market, and worship dutifully at the altar of Milton Friedman are really just completely and epically full of shit, and really just want government's ONLY role to be ensuring that the nation's wealthiest get rich and stay that way.

I mean, one might just get the impression that a certain class decided to dress up greed as a sophisticated ethos, and their own welfare as a national security concern. But that would mean the infrastructure of this country is rotten, and that's simply just not possible -- because we're a shining beacon of righteousness in the universe.

I must have missed something. Maybe I need to re-read an Ayn Rand novel.