Star Tribune Letter: How long can this free market last?

11/13/2005

Dave Hage’s “The road to Wellville” (Opinion Exchange, Nov. 6) is fascinating as well as instructive. Inasmuch as Wal-Mart’s health care policy is based on, as is everything else in the company, the bottom line, the memos point out fundamental contradictions in market capitalism.

Given that market capitalism performs best where labor assets are fluid and re-locatable, the national sacred cow of free market capitalism has eroded traditional extended families and the economic safety nets implicit therein, i.e. intergenerational economic and social support. The destruction of traditional safety nets has resulted in smaller families and fewer replacements and therefore higher inherent labor costs, due to a lack of young healthy workers.

Given these assumptions, one might conclude that the current iteration of the free-market model, which Wal-Mart coupled with privately funded health care epitomize, can only consume itself for the sake of the bottom line. Unfortunately, the downside of this self-destruction will be the disrupted life expectations of some generations of workers. While the circumstances are not exactly the same, this cycle last occurred during the 1930s, and finally resulted in a new corporate/social contract which lasted only as long as the lives of that suffering generation.

MICHAEL MILES, VICTORIA