Free Market

Paula Protani's letter ( "Medallion towing system benefits Baltimore, residents," March 4) is exactly what anyone should expect to hear from someone whose monopoly status is threatened. She claims that "the medallion towers provide the city with quality, reliable service, quick response and regulated prices. " The first question that should be asked of Ms. Protani is, "Compared to what?" By what standard do medallion towers provide quality, reliable service, and a quick response?

In 1975, when asked to explain why Margaret Thatcher was poised to take over the Tory Party, the irascible British satirist Malcolm Muggeridge replied that it was all due to television - and the fact that the telegenic Mrs. Thatcher had a "certain imbecile charm. " That was one of the nicer things said about an "imbecile" who earned a degree in chemistry from Oxford and became a lawyer while studying at home. (She sent her bar application from the maternity ward while recovering from delivering twins.)

In an interview on National Public Radio this week, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said that the Gulf oil spill was an example of the free market working properly. He reasoned that BP had the most to lose from the spill, namely $100 million per day in costs. And thus, BP had the greatest incentive to clean-up the oil spill. His conclusion is odd: The market functions properly when an oil company has repeated safety violations, ultimately causing an oil rig explosion that causes a loss in lives and perhaps the greatest environmental catastrophe in history.

Less than a week before the U.S. election, former president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev berated America and all but endorsed the sitting president and fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner at an event I attended in Houston. Speaking last Thursday from a podium built by oil money and introduced by a socialite teetering in a French shoemaker's trademarked red-soled heels, he admonished those in the audience to scrap free enterprise for "sustainability. " Taking a theme from Barack Obama's campaign, Mr. Gorbachev said, "The goals of economic growth should not depend on super profits and overconsumption," to vigorous applause at the Wortham Center as the banners of major oil company arts patrons benignly welcomed visitors in the grand foyer.

There would be little reason for the existence of a liquor lobby (or any other lobby for that matter) if it weren't for the countless unnecessary laws, rules and regulations emanating from the over-inflated egos of petty bureaucrats. Why can't we simply let every restaurant that wants a liquor license have one - for a reasonable fee - until it proves itself unworthy of the privilege? If only we let them, competition and the free market would weed out the bad apples. Dave Reich, Perry Hall

In the topsy-turvy, Alice-in-Wonderland alternative universe of the tea party and its Republican toadies, small-government and free-market economic policy will save the nation from disaster. In fact, as thinking Americans know full well, the current economic crisis is largely due to the unmitigated greed of Wall Street banks and American homeowners, abetted for years by the "free market" nonsense that Reps. Paul Ryan and Michelle Bachmann continue to foist on the public. When the history of this era is written, it will be clear that the Obama administration's aggressive action saved the nation from a fate far worse than the current recession.

If Republicans really think medical service is best rendered by the free market — hard to believe given that the United States' health outcomes rank on the bottom of the developed world — they should go all the way. Why do we have a fully government-run, taxpayer-paid, socialized, single-payer Medicare system if the free market does a better job providing quality care? Why, then, not let the market work its wonders for the elderly? Why, in the final analysis, do the Republican repeal gimmicks not include full repeal of the truly socialized medicine, Medicare?

CAPITALISM is a great tool for human progress, but Germany is proving the free market is too free.German companies have been prime contributors to Iraq's military complex, including its abilities to manufacture chemical weapons and its progress toward building nuclear weapons.But we can't be smug or self-righteous about this. The U.S. supported Iraq in its long war against Iran, overlooked its use of chemical weapons and urged other Arab nations to help finance Iraq. And our nation has supported terrorism that suits our national purposes and profited by weapons sales that aid our balance-of-trade deficit problem.

Are we witnessing the end of capitalism? That's what you might think, based on the many voices now questioning the continued viability of the free market model that has provided our country with such abundance for well over two centuries. The strongest condemnations have concerned the unprecedented intrusiveness of the federal government's new role in the private sector and the ruinous dollar amount of the bailout package. These are legitimate concerns, but such criticisms must eventually give way to discussion about our path forward.

PARIS -- Last month Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, gave a striking talk to a Woodrow Wilson Scholars' Center audience, describing the cultural factors at work in economic behavior, speaking in particular of their influence on the Russian economy since the Soviet system collapsed.What was noteworthy about this speech was that Mr. Greenspan found the notion that cultural factors are an important force in the economy a novel idea.Mr. Greenspan is not a foolish man, and if this idea was a new idea to him, that surely is evidence of a huge and crucial professional deformation among Western economists, too often educated to ignore all but a narrow range of materially or mathematically defined factors in an economy's functioning.

The arrival of November means not only Thanksgiving in Carroll County. Craft fairs and bazaars fill the calendar this month, offering a variety of items to meet every budget. Now in its 39th year, Ascension Episcopal Church's Mistletoe Mart in Westminster features 50 craftsmen, and attracts an average of 3,000 people over its three-day run, Nov. 8-10, according to Joyce Brown, co-chair. The juried craft show traditionally has a waiting list of crafters wanting to participate.

The Occupy Wall Street movement was created to make people aware of issues that aren't usually discussed in the mainstream corporate media: the greed of the powerful, the destruction of the environment, violence against women and gays and the perpetual war waged for oil and other resources, with the utter waste of young lives it entails. Mainstream media describe the "free market" in positive terms such as "wealth creation. " But the never use the more accurate term "systemic poverty.

Paul Jaskunas is to be commended for his critique of the shallow materialism of conservative individualism ("A false self-reliance," Aug. 24). Individual freedom narrowly conceived as egoistic self-interest, insatiable profiteering and idolatrous devotion to the so-called free market leads inexorably to a spiritual desert. It prevents any true flowering of the human personality, which is the essence of individual freedom. The deification of the market is especially dangerous in this era of giant corporations, which are global in scope and deeply authoritarian in character.

It's hip these days for everyone from world leaders to the Occupy Wall Street crowd to attack free-market, limited-government capitalism as wild and in need of control because it's supposedly the cause of the world economic collapse. This is a myth. It's too much government-facilitated cronyism that's causing the mayhem wrongfully attributed to capitalism. This trend now continues in the context of the London Olympics and its private security outsourcing. Security firm G4S fell drastically short of its contractual commitments to staff the Games with 10,000 security personnel, requiring the military to step in with 3,500 troops to make up the shortfall.

Here is a question that the Ravens will have to answer in the coming weeks: Will they be comfortable going into the season without an experienced backup behind Ray Rice? Currently, the three top guys behind Rice on the running back depth chart - second-year players Anthony Allen and Damien Berry and rookie third-round pick Bernard Pierce - will enter training camp with three combined NFL carries. All of those belong to Allen, who carried the ball three times for eight yards in the Ravens' blowout victory over theSt.

The football world's focus returns to Indianapolis this week, where more than 300 NFL hopefuls will participate in the annual scouting combine at Lucas Oil Stadium. Starting Wednesday and running through next Tuesday, the event, which comes two weeks after the city played host to the Super Bowl, is the biggest showcase for prospects before late April's NFL Draft. It also represents one of the first opportunities for teams to start shaping their game plans for the offseason. The Ravens' top decision makers and scouts will be on hand, studying the draft class with a particular eye on finding help for the offensive line, passing game and pass rush.

PRAGUE -- The accepted wisdom about the transformation of Eastern Europe over the past decade is that the former communist bloc is moving toward democracy and a market economy. These two terms are used together so often that you might get the idea they are an inseparable double act: Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, Batman and Robin. But each of these concepts has its difficulties in the post-communist world. With democracy, it is relatively easy to diagnose these difficulties: Crooked politicians paid by crooked businessmen are the biggest problem in many countries, and in others the general failure of democratic politics is an even bigger one. But let's look at the other half of this pairing, and see how the market economy is progressing, and what the structural problems are in adapting.

WARSAW, Poland -- Trashed by public opinion polls, Poland's post-Communist authorities have begun to roll back some of the free market policies they so wholeheartedly endorsed less than two years ago in what two leading economists see as an attempt to stave off a popular rebellion.Recent developments have included:* Government intervention in the affairs of state-owned industries in an effort to prevent bankruptcies.* Protectionist import tariffs on some goods.* The imminent departure of free market economist Leszek Balcerowicz, deputy prime minister in charge of economic reform.

If Michale Barr ("Let market decide when wind blows," Feb. 7) is correct that technologies succeed only when the free market aligns to demand and finance them, then we have wasted billions on the development of such crackpot schemes as aviation, satellite communications, hydro-power, interstate highways, nuclear energy, global positioning and, perhaps the biggest government boondoggle of all time, the Internet. The government led all of these efforts when all the market demanded was faster horses, better steam locomotives and more whale oil. By positioning Maryland as a frontrunner in developing clean, alternative energy sources, Gov.Martin O'Malleyis asking us to create an state where future generations have the infrastructure needed to prosper.

The long, circuitous ride that is Ricky Williams' football career again swerved abruptly Tuesday when the Ravens' enigmatic reserve running back announced that he was retiring from the NFL. Since early last week, Williams, who reached the 10,000-yard career rushing plateau in 2011, his only season in Baltimore, had been mulling the decision to walk away from the NFL (again) to explore other interests and focus on his foundation. The 34-year-old acknowledged he could change his mind.