Jay Honeck wrote:

Actually -- so far -- the schools in Iowa City have done a pretty good
job of teaching the free-market system to my kids. Of course . . .
. . . . there is always the
message that capitalism needs to be reigned in lest it go crazy and
crush the weak and weary.

Well, I should think you'd want them taught "the facts of life". The
final sentence above is pretty much an emperically proven fact, is it
not?

I'm not putting down the free market system or capitalism in saying
this; not at all. I believe the underlying laws of free market
economics are demonstrated economic (and/or psychological) principles,
more or less as valid, universal, reliable, and inescapable as the laws
of physics that I know a fair amount about.

And I'm also in full agreement with, was it Churchill?, who supposedly
once said something like: "Democratic capitalism is not a particularly
good social or economic system. It's just substantially better than any
other social system that mankind has come up with." True enough, then
and now.

But when Free Market Economics turns into, not a set of economic laws to
help shape our broader policy making, but into an ideology, a economic
theology, before which we're all supposed to bow down -- that's bad news.

When FME becomes an economic religion which, as interpreted by its
acolytes and ayatollahs is supposed to reign dominant over every other
consideration in our lives, then indeed a lot of crushing of the weak,
the weary, the unfortunate, the innocent -- not to mention a lot of
exploitation of them and others -- is certain to result.