(This will probably make more sense if you read Part 1 first...)
One of the inevitable offshoots of an economy based on the "invisible hand" of free market forces is extreme social dislocation. In an unrestrained free market economy, the social and cultural ties that bind us together hinder a producers ability to freely utilize us as mere labor. For example, why don't most people work on Christmas Day? There's no reason not to - except for the restraints generated by social, familial, and religious ties that say we should spend time together with family on that day instead. There are lots of examples of this--for example, moral restrictions on child labor, gender discrimination, or "equal pay for equal work" laws. Together, these non-market forces represent a brake on a producers ability to freely utilize our labor. Or put another way, they prevent producers from creating what is, in their mind, the ideal free market state.
Slavery is the ideal state of social affairs for an unrestrained free market. In nineteenth century America, human beings were bought and sold solely on the basis of their ability to provide a commodity, labor. Any restraints on producers caused by cultural and familial ties among the slaves were eliminated by separating families so that no such ties could be maintained, and any restraints on the use of physical beatings as an inducment to work harder were removed by defining Blacks as "other than" those people who would have an expectation of not being beaten (whites). This gave producers (plantation owners) a free hand to create the Utopian market state (slavery).
The same forces are at work in the U.S. today, but more subtly. The problem for producers today is that Thomas Jefferson wrote that man has inalienable value and rights separate from his ability to labor, and that these needs and rights therefore trump the needs of the invisible hand. Of course, the idea of inalienable rights is abhorant to producers because it restricts their ability to freely commoditize labor. But in a society of laws, not brute force, they have been forced to live with the limitations.
At the same time, modern societies can not exist without open markets. What is needed is a balance between an unrestrained free market on the one hand, and the rights of society and the individual on the other. When the proper balance is struck, the result is a fair market capable of sustaining social cohesion and individual freedoms as well as a reasonable rate of economic growth.
It's all about balance. Today, we have become "upside down" in the relationship between market and social forces. For most of the last decade, our economy has tilted towards an unrestrained free market and an unrestrained commoditization of labor and nature at the expense of society and the individual. Now it's time to tilt the beam back the other way for awhile, away from the path to slavery and towards a fair market economy. And if you hear a person arguing that this isn't possible because the "invisible hand" must be given free reign for the good of society, be assured of one thing: you are face to face with a mind that is not large enough to understand the issue at hand. John McCain is a proponant of a free market and opposes a fair market.
You must fight back! Stand in line at the polls Tuesday, no matter how long that line may be, and vote for Barrack Obama.
(And remember, Republicans vote on November 5th this year, Democrats on November 4th)
Part 3....yup.
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