Death of a Social Free-Market.

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When I think of a market, I think of typically financial transactions, places where goods and services are exchanged with a relative degree of choice and freedom. The markets aren’t entirely free by design, and are regulated by the government to ensure that the goods and services aren’t the fruits of criminal activity, abuse, fraud, or some other criminal source. People are free to choose the goods, products, and services that they want based upon their preferences, and an individual can use any metric that they wish to use in making their choices (price, color, source, ethical treatment, adherence to certain diet or lifestyle choices, business size, etc.).

But what we’re seeing now is the infringement upon the social markets. The marketplace of ideas is being regulated to death. Censorship from the government, big tech, private industry, activist groups, churches, and others, are driving away our ability to hear a wide variety of opinions and views, leaving fewer and fewer opinions filling the commons, and pushing more and more people out of the commons. Echo chambers are a real thing, particularly nasty on social media, and it is happening more and more frequently by choice. We are dividing as a nation, as a people, and more and more actively looking for or, worst yet, assuming the worst motivations from those they disagree with.

I wrote recently about The End of a Golden Age, seeing how our markets were bare as people in their panic bought the things that they needed, which rippled through our culture, and had a larger effect than it reasonably should have. The markets in socialist countries were controlled by bureaucratic institutions that had centralized the food producers, leading to regular food shortages and routine starvation. The same thing happens in the social sphere. The social producers were centralized and controlled by either the government or their allies, and shortages of ideas, solutions, opinions, philosophy became commonplace, leading to intellectual starvation. People became oblivious to what they were missing until they were exposed to an environment where it wasn’t controlled.

Liberty and responsibility are being demonized. The ability to take care of one’s self and family, to live independently, to express one’s self in a way that contradicts the limited ideas pushed forward by the corporate media and their allies in big tech, the universities, is being portrayed as a trait of white supremacy. It’s a sign of the times when a meme can be this profound.

The social free-market is being attacked and is on the ropes. The first step to returning to it is regaining an inherent skepticism of everything. Do the digging and question the facts and assumptions. Go through and actively strip out the editorial comments and opinions threaded into the news stories from any publication. Recognize that everyone has their biases, including yourself. Find more voices, and disobey those who would press for fewer. As Thomas Jefferson said, “question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.”

And if the common social market gets closed, find others. I am afraid of the possibility that my voice will be silenced, either through censorship or worse. But if it is my fate, then I accept it. The middle ground is disappearing, and everyone is being pushed into two camps, with no communication between and only caricatures of their opposition. I hope to continue to be a voice and go between as long as I can.