Progressives Fear Market Ideas

 

Peter Schiff’s recent interview with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell is a must-see. Schiff, who is running against Chris Dodd in the 2010 Senate elections, apparently thought he was being invited to lay out his reasonable free-market proposals for health care reform. O’Donnell, on the other hand, attempted to turn the interview into a Chris Dodd campaign event.

 

This is how progressives think free market ideas should be treated. They should be screamed over, interrupted, and distorted beyond recognition. Free market ideas – that people know what they want and should be allowed to make their own cost-benefit decisions – are simply too powerful to be acknowledged. Seniors must be scared into thinking that their Medicare will be “taken away”. Parents must be scared into thinking that their children will be “denied” an education. All must be taught that they will lose what is most valuable to them.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The free market is a system of choice. People demonstrate what they truly value by creating or obtaining it for themselves through voluntary exchange. If parents value education, they can purchase it on the market. If seniors value health care, they can purchase it as well. Government cannot know what we value better than we do ourselves – it can only force us to choose between accepting its arbitrary value judgments and violating the law. Government, and not the market, is responsible for taking away our freedom of choice – and in taking away choices, it necessarily takes away what we value the most.