Markets, competition and fairness

This entry was prompted by a commentary by former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist on the CNN website. Really, this entry was prompted by two sentences in the commentary. You don't have to read the entire commentary to understand my anger over the sentences. You should read the entire Frist commentary but here is the section that got me to write my own opinion:

"Initially, conservatives howled because the prescription drug initiative "cost too much." Liberals hated it because it involved the markets and competition."

I'd be mad at this either as a Conservative or as a Liberal. I can't really classify myself as either of these. Politically, I tend to be more liberal but I am more conservative in religion. I am mixed on many social issues which I won't get right now. But I'm trying to be fair here. I personally respect Bill Frist and I know many Democratic senators say things like this too. But I can't comment on everything. I am going to concentrate on the second sentence, "Liberals hated it because it involved the markets and competition." I can categorically state that liberals do not hate the markets and do not hate competition - whether in the markets or in any other area.

One thing that liberals [and everyone I've ever met] do hate is unfair competition and markets that are not competitive. In any competition there are rules and there are judges or referees of some sort. What liberals [and most reasonable people] hate is when people want to get rid of (or lessen the influence of) the judges and referees or to reduce market competition. We are now living through the results of this. There are a lot of reasons to be mad at government (just as we often get mad at the umpire in a ball game) but one of the great strengths of government is that it acts (or should act) as a fair, unbiased referee. When it doesn't do this, it is time to vote them out! Our federal, state and local governments are made up of people of various backgrounds and they always disagree about how to do something but that all averages out so that they become the fairness factor in our markets. Markets and companies must always make decisions in their own self interest. They can't worry about being fair to their competitors. That is the job of the government.