A re-post from Facebook:
Of course, free markets and capitalism are to blame for this, not the corrupt legal system of this country.
This is the same situation as with the environmental pollution 100-150 years ago, when the courts sided with large companies (owners of industrial plants, railroads, etc.) in lawsuits brought against the latter by their smaller neighbors. Fast-forward 100 years, and suddenly everyone is environment-conscious and blaming capitalism, free markets, deregulation, profit, and freedom for the environment being messed up... and of course calling for more government!
But what happened then and what is happening now is not "market failure", but a dysfunction within the state-operated monopolized legal system. One single function that the government is theoretically supposed to do — protect people's rights — it has failed at again and again. And everyone, from the right and from the left, is calling for more government in those areas where it's not supposed to be involved at all, when the only solution is more privatization: including that of the legal system!
And, unsurprisingly, the neocon "justices" voted for the corporatist outcome. The two parties in this country are not liberals vs. conservatives. These terms made some sense in the 19th-century UK, but not the US today (Hayek discusses this quite well in his essay "Why I Am Not a Conservative".) Today it's socialists vs. fascists. Pick your poison.
But what happened then and what is happening now is not "market failure", but a dysfunction within the state-operated monopolized legal system. One single function that the government is theoretically supposed to do — protect people's rights — it has failed at again and again. And everyone, from the right and from the left, is calling for more government in those areas where it's not supposed to be involved at all, when the only solution is more privatization: including that of the legal system!
And, unsurprisingly, the neocon "justices" voted for the corporatist outcome. The two parties in this country are not liberals vs. conservatives. These terms made some sense in the 19th-century UK, but not the US today (Hayek discusses this quite well in his essay "Why I Am Not a Conservative".) Today it's socialists vs. fascists. Pick your poison.
