There is a pressing issue in American health care that warrants at least a modicum of airtime from radio talk show pundits—a softheaded lot that continues to spin the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, as a textbook failure of state meddling in the marketplace.
Though they do not earnestly care, the free market mouthpieces on talk radio – who shamelessly misinform their listeners about the government’s role in economics – continue to wrongly attribute the turmoil surrounding Obamacare (in states like Arizona and Tennessee) to a much larger failure of government.
It is always the same old story that floods the airwaves: The market fails because the state refuses to recognize its role in relation to free market exchange, and it fails not only to know its place but also fails to act accordingly.
Despite all irony, however, it seems that radio’s reactionary tub-thumpers and free market warriors feel no need to address a basic precept of capitalist enterprise; namely, that the state creates the market (which is partly why genuine anarchists would never prefer the tyranny of markets to the tyranny of the state). As Robert Reich notes, “Civilization … is defined by rules; rules create markets, and governments generate the rules.”
Briefly consider, for example, the elemental things without which capitalism would struggle to perform as it does: property, the rule of law, contracts, and even bankruptcy. Now, consider the fact that nature holds no place for…