Public goods and the "free" market

Hi folks: I've been involved with SWOP since 2001. I'll be doing occasional commentary for SWOPblogger. --marjorie

Tim McGivern has an excellent commentary in the Alibi this week about Press Release Journalism -- you know, how journalists take press releases almost verbatim and turn them into news. In this example he slams the Albuquerque Journal’s Business Outlook for running a story about a commercial chile thinner that was produced at New Mexico State and is now being put into production by a farmer in Columbus. Apparently the reporter for the story is none other than an assistant editor with NMSU Agricultural Communications. That’s right folks -- the Journal is running as news the promotional materials written by publicists.

Good catch, Tim.

Another thing caught my eye in this commentary that I’d like to share. One of the quotes from the Journal story is by Rich Phillips, senior project manager for NMSU’s College of Agriculture and Home Economics:

“This is a major step forward in an effort to mechanize chile production. We saw the need for this machine, developed the technology, tested it and then handed it to a commercial manufacturer.”

You know, it doesn’t get much plainer than that. So, in the future, when this manufacturer, CEMCO Inc., makes a fortune and people chalk it up to their “hard” work and sacrifices, just remember that it was the public that developed their product for them.

Am I saying that there shouldn’t be transfer of public goods to private entities for profit? Well, yeah, I guess I am. But that’s how our economy works -- there is rampant exploitation of public goods by private companies for profit. Some of it is direct transfer of technology, like this example, and the “commons”, like our public airwaves. There is also the use of our public infrastructure. And there is the unpaid use of our environment, which is quite often polluted at will by companies -- what economists call negative externalities and what many of us call environmental racism because most likely these industries will be in poor communities of color.

So, knowing that this is how it works, can we all just agree to drop the charade of this so-called “free market” and stop glorifying capitalists for their “hard” work and ingenuity. I don’t care how philanthropic some of these folks are. Some of them, I’m sure, are truly fine individuals -- that is not the point. The point is that we are all in this together and some people have been able to exploit the system better than others. This is one of the reasons such things as a progressive tax structure and regulations that protect our public assets are good.