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Later, Lewis discovered that phone companies and DSL service providers showed the same contempt for their existing customers. His readers flooded him with stories of their own similar experiences.
There are other clouds on the horizon. The events that brought Enron down expanded the list of players held in contempt to include stockholders and the workforce as well. This corporation, which flourished during the great free market expansion of the 90's, turned out to be running an elaborate Ponzi scheme, where the employees...through their purchases of Enron stock for their 401(k) accounts...kept the stock price high, but were forbidden to sell their stock for a period of time. Top Enron executives, like all pyramid scheme originators, were not subject to the same rules as the other players, and made out like gangbusters.
What is common to each of these news bites, is that free market capitalism is ostensibly involved. However, as any "true" libertarian worth his salt will tell you, this can't be true. Libertarian literature already abounds with analyses of these events that blames irrational government regulations...or regulations targeted for specific industries...for these results. If the market were free...it is maintained...it would take care of itself.
But, can we really leap to this conclusion? The ultimate free market, the Internet...barely regulated by government at all...abounds with Ponzi schemes. Barely a day goes by that our mailbox does not fill up with get-rich-quick "offers" that all have the one thing in common. That is, whether they are good old fashioned chain letters or multi-level marketing "programs"...they all depend upon an exponential expansion of the "consumer" (read: "sucker") base for their continued "success." Exponential expansions ALWAYS eventually use up all possible participants. The larger the expansion factor...i.e. the number of new participants that must join at each step to ensure the continued expansion...the quicker saturation is reached. This is why all such schemes benefit only the initial players and a handful of others. It is interesting to note that we haven't received for many years...via snail mail...a single solicitation to take part in such systems. Why? Presumedly because of strong laws forbidding it which are enforced by the government.
Lewis also noted in his latest article that...according to the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI)..."Not only are consumers just as satisfied with the federal government as they are with the private sector, the federal government's scores are improving, while the private sector's are in decline."
This is very bad news indeed for libertarians! Wedded as we are to the notion that the free market is good, government mostly bad, this bodes ill for the electoral future of the Libertarian Party and libertarian ideas.
What appears to us to be happening is that capitalism...even the relatively free market version in the U.S....is running up against what Karl Marx called its "internal contradictions." Marx long ago noted that capitalism was itself a Ponzi scheme. That is, since the owners of an enterprise must make a profit to stay viable, the sum total of all workers can not purchase the total output of goods and services. This leads to periodic surplus inventory, which is Marx's explanation of the business cycle. Since Marx noted this in the nineteenth century, capitalism has been rescued time and again by the rapid modern pace of technological innovation from facing up to this essential contradiction. That, and the fact that human population has also been expanding exponentially during the same period have masked the problem.
A second Marxian observation is also in play...namely, that "mature" capitalist industries...due to competition...eventually ALWAYS tend toward monopoly status. Since we are conversant with up-to-the-minute developments in this industry...we agree with Bill Gates that Microsoft is not really a monopoly. The computer industry, especially the software branch...is far from being mature. On the other hand, to the millions of users tied into Microsoft Windows, it certainly doesn't seem that way! Since the government eased off of Microsoft, they have been devising one method after another to extract maximum amounts of money from the user base. Right now, they are attempting to achieve "total control" over software distribution and licensing with "passports" and other devices to keep you from straying to the feeble competition. So, while they may not be a monopoly, they are certainly behaving like one! Whether this will be a successful business strategy or not remains to be seen. We frankly doubt it. But they can sure administer a lot of fiscal pain in the mean time.
To us, the bottom line is this. Free markets SEEM to be a vibrant solution to many problems, at least in theory. In practice, however, no markets are now OR EVER HAVE BEEN totally free. The Internet may come as close as anything, but the fact that it abounds with what would be blatant criminality in any other context suggests that we better keep a sharp eye on its development.
Meanwhile, the already blatant criminality of existing corporations...the S & L rip-off being the last previous example...shows that modern capitalism is becoming decoupled from its customers, its workers AND its stockholders...except for a privileged few. Those latter are definitely making hay while the sun shines. Putting ourselves in their shoes we don't wonder why. The rules are such that they CAN do it, so why shouldn't they? After all, as has been often stated...here and elsewhere...greed is not only good, but ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for the successful workings of capitalism. Without the few accumulating the capital necessary to fund new enterprises that benefit the many, capitalism can not function.
We conclude that new rules are needed. Hopefully, the market itself will eventually develop these rules. But laid off or swindled workers can not wait for "eventually." They and their families have to eat today. If we libertarians and other boosters of capitalism can not find a way...and we don't mean "trust the market"...to ameliorate this situation, we are afraid that the government...currently at a high point of popularity...will find ways to make it even worse.
Please tell us YOUR thoughts and experiences with these matters. However, please save the libertarian catechismic lecturers for others. We're talking practicality here, NOT "principles." We are more interested in what is actually happening than in yet-another-libertarian-utopian theory.
Talk to you later...
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