Are you for free markets? Are people who aren’t well-informed for them?
How the hell can’t they be? Free. Good. America is about freedom, so free markets are good.
What’s the alternative? Enslaved markets? Burdened markets? Oppressed Markets? ‘Regulated’ markets with all the negative connotations of that word?
This is an example how politics is manipulated with language. You don’t even need to get to any rational issues of the best ‘market’ policies when the name has already won.
What free markets really mean is either markets without tariffs and/or without regulations.
Putting tariffs to the side, that means markets without those burdensome things like safety regulations, quality regulations, labor regulations, or any other public concern.
So what it means is, ‘free’ of the public’s democratic power. The public’s power taken away.
They don’t tell you the ‘freedom’ is ‘freedom for the owner against the public good’.
We don’t even have a WORD for the other side of the issue.
So that lets the name ‘free markets’ get used millions of times — in the name or description of all kinds of ‘think tanks’ and economics figures and publications and tv pundits and much more.
Each time it is, just the name is propagandizing their harmful, anti-democratic policies, as people at best watch and see who is ‘against freedom’, why listen to them?
It does allow what are more accurately called “unconstrained greed” policies to get treated as not only one of, but as the main if not only legitimate options by media.
And think about how hard it would be to combat this, to get the name changed to something more accurate.
And that is an example how language can play a powerful and harmful role in our politics.
I’ve called “liberal media” another of the great propaganda phrases of modern America. But this is another.
Looking for a picture for this, I ran across a commentary making the same point well.
The words 'free trade' have been the greatest propaganda coup in a generation“Free trade"
Who could be against those two words together?
"Free" is among the most-beloved words in the English language. It means costless and it's a synonym for liberty. Everyone wants everything to be free.
"Trade" is almost as good. We like to trade. I have something extra and you give me something I need. Everyone is happy.
Combining them is poetry. As propaganda it has an unblemished record. No two economic words together are so-adored. 'Free trade' is synonymous with 'everybody wins'.
No serious economist or politician has dared to speak against free trade for a generation. The doctrine was so all-consuming in the past generation that no word against it would be aired even if someone did speak against it. It was unopposed. Unchallenged.
Heck, we don’t even have a good word for our economic policies. They have not only ‘free markets’ but ‘capitalism’ as a catch-all — and lacking a clear name for our side, it defaults to their pointing to any changes from the worst capitalism as Soviet, Maoist, Castro — poverty and tyranny however well-intended.
We’re wanting to have discussions with fellow Americans about these issues. The first problem is the media segmenting people — how do you even talk to right-wingers much? They’re watching Fox and listening to talk radio. You can get a bumper sticker if you live by them.
The second problem is if you do get to talk to them, studies have found their minds actually tune out anything that sounds ‘radical’ to them, like any liberal policies.
And then there’s those language issues.
And then there are all the ‘talking points’ created by billions spent on a propaganda industry.
That’s a lot to get past to talk to them. It basically has made the rational part of democracy obsolete.