Escape from free market dogma

I am not enraged.

So what if telemarketers call, defying the Do Not Call registry with their scams.

No matter that to buy fruit juice at Albertson’s, I must pore over the small print in back or risk paying for colored water.

And what if AARP’s insurance partner, UnitedHealth Group, is guilty of deceptive marketing to seniors?

I am cool, too, with insurance companies whose pitches for health, prescription and burial coverage arrive in envelopes that mimic official Medicare correspondence. Happenstance, I’m sure. (One, incidentally, sells a “Funeral Advantage Program.” Oxymoron?)

And I just shrug when free marketer Mitt Romney advocates a minor divergence from doctrinal purity, proposing that the taxpayers, you and me, pay $20 billion for research to bolster Detroit automakers.

None of this enrages me for I recognize it as what Adam Smith termed the “mean rapacity” of business. Yes, that Adam Smith, the prophet of free market capitalism. He wasn’t what we are taught. Lest you faint and get hurt, seat yourself while I quote – liberally – from Saint Adam.

• “The property which every man has in his own labor, as it is the original foundation of all other property….” What? Labor before capital? Pretty leftist.

• “Profit is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.” Hmmm. Are we sure Smith is dead and buried, not watching our meltdown from an undisclosed location?

• “The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from [merchants and manufacturers] ought always to be listened to with great precaution…with the most suspicious attention.” Not a sure-fire applause line for Chamber of Commerce speakers.

Am I cherry-picking Adam Smith to deceive? Yes, I am cherry picking. It’s not to fool you, though, just to complement the Classic Comics version of Smith’s ideas that his devotées retail everywhere; heck, the Albuquerque Journal’s Op Ed pages offer little else. And it’s easy -– there are cherries galore. Like this:

• “Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor.” How’s that for explaining pay inequities and the ever-lagging minimum wage?

Taxation? Free market fundamentalists hate it, but their prophet said paying taxes is a badge of “liberty.” Also, here’s how to tax fairly:

• “It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expence (sic) not only in proportion to their revenue but something more than in that proportion.”

That’s progressive taxation! Question — do free marketers not read Adam Smith or do they quote him selectively?

• “Civil government… is in reality… instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor.” Finally, something the Bush Administration not only grasped but pursued effectively.

Having flaunted my familiarity with Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” let me level with you. I cribbed lots from humorist and libertarian P.J. O’ Rourke, author of “On the Wealth of Nations” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007). O’Rourke believes Smith was not out to justify “amoral greed,” but wanted to “make life better.”

To do that, we’d better recognize there’s no hard science of economics, just a human, fallible effort once (properly) termed “political economy.” Next, quit genuflecting before the “free market.” (In doing so, today’s free market fanatics ape yesterday’s Marxists, who famously mistook hypotheses for proofs, then worshipped them.)

Of course “The Wealth of Nations” is fundamental but there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Smith’s philosophies or those of acolytes Milton Friedman and Allan Greenspan, Phil Gramm and Pete Domenici, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. Leftist economists (restricted mostly to monthlies or the blogosphere) see more complexity, but when they, too, promulgate capital “T” Truths, I tremble.

To better our economic lives (or, minimally, escape Great Depression II), we’d should cogitate and experiment. Let’s save prayer for Turkey Day.

Happy Thanksgiving.