If you’re an American, you’ve probably heard this one before: “Capitalism means
freedom.” With the liberty of the free market, the thinking goes, individuals are empowered
to make their own decisions. Sounds good, right? If you buy into this logic, then any
alternative with more role for the public seems oppressive and tyrannical, one where
other people make all the decisions for you.
Nice theory, but that’s not how it works.
Our economy today isn’t about freedom at all. Just the opposite! American capitalism
today is defined by an overwhelming lack of freedom for the vast majority of people—and
incredible, dictatorial power for a few people at the very top.
That’s because we have allowed big corporate monopolies to take over a lot of the work
of government, and replaced public institutions with private, for-profit ones. They gobble
up small- and medium-sized businesses so they can set all the terms.
You hear a lot about the “freedom to choose.” But what does that freedom really mean? Sure,
we can choose between different eyeglass companies—until we learn they are all owned by the same conglomerate
behind the scenes. We can choose between Budweiser, Skol, or Becks beer—but they’re all owned
by the same company, too.
And when it comes to work, where most people spend most of their time, people don’t have
much freedom at all.
Despite claims that workers freely enter into a contract to sell their labor, there’s
no free choice between working and not working. In a country like ours, where 40 percent of
people can’t scrape together $400 in an emergency, the reality is that you either
work or you starve. You don’t have several months to take time off and carefully choose
a good employer.
In order to survive, people submit to working menial, unrewarding jobs for little pay, no
security, and bad benefits. And once they’re on the job, that lack of freedom only gets
worse. When we go to work, we check our hard-won rights at the door, and our employers rule
over us night and day.
Big corporations like Amazon punish workers for speaking out. Many companies are now spying
on workers’ political activities. They intrude into people’s private lives, monitor their
social media, regulate their breaks. In poultry plants across the country, workers are penalized
for simply using the bathroom, to the point that they wear adult diapers and avoid drinking
water so as to keep working. That’s not “freedom.”
And when the boss decides to fire you, there’s no “due process.” Like a feudal lord,
he can fire and punish workers at will. In practice, American workplaces are like “private
governments” where the freedoms we associate with democracy don’t exist. When we clock
in, we become subjects, not citizens.
Without anti-monopoly regulations to restrict their size or labor unions to contest their
power over employees, corporations and their wealthy CEOs have as much power over ordinary
people as any government agency—if not more. Despite the lie that our market is “free,”
most industries are dominated by a few massive firms.
Two corporations control office supplies. Five corporations control food. Two corporations
dominate retail. Four corporations control home internet. One corporation dominates books.
Instead of “free competition,” the status quo is monopoly control. Huge corporations
set the terms and manage the economy from their perch at the top of the market, deciding
who succeeds and who fails.
When Facebook decides to promote a political agenda to benefit itself, who can’t stop
them? When Amazon decides it doesn’t like a particular book, that book can vanish from
the place most everyone buys books. When Pfizer decides to raise insulin prices ahead of a
shareholders’ meeting, it’s done—and people die as a result.
Every day, decisions that affect millions of people are made not by everyone in a democratic
manner, but by unelected people who have profits, and not the well-being of others, in mind.
We already have a centralized economy. But it isn’t run by the people.
That’s the problem at the heart of our system. Elected officials are always expressing concern
about government intrusion into our private lives. But they’re happy to let corporations
take advantage of us in ways that would be unconstitutional for any democratic government.
That’s because they take so much campaign cash—and jobs, after they have left office—from
these big corporations.
The hard truth is that despite what you hear, the modern American economy is not about the
“freedom to choose”: in job markets where you either get a job or you die, in workplaces
where the boss is king, and in marketplaces dominated by huge, abusive monopolies, you
don’t have much of a choice
at all.