The opportunity that the free market offers exist for anyone regardless of age, sex, gender, race, origin, any of it. All you need is an idea and the motivation to get it out of your head and into the world as a real thing.
There are other factors, but it all starts with you or I or some stranger who can see a need or a want and find a way (or a better way) to fill it. The net output of that is the economy.
The idea guy or gal needs materials that they buy to which they add value. They do this, presumably, to meet a need or want they identified.
That process creates (or saves jobs), but if there is a genuine need or want, then meeting it will create more jobs and generate wealth. People will exchange their earnings for the thing.
As Skip noted here,
The economy, if one wishes to call it that, exists as a mere sifter of goods and services to consumers who are not looking to solve an economic issue but to satisfy the desires and needs of Individuals. I want a house to stay dry and warm, I want a car so as to go from Point A to Point B in relative comfort, speed, and reliability. And I used to desire a better sound system so as to enjoy listening to music more.
I use the economy to obtain these things so I do participate in the economy but that’s secondary to what I either need (like food) or want…”
Meeting the needs and desires of Individuals creates the free market economy, not the other way around. So Skip sort of said all that, and what’s your point? My point is what the Democrat party wants from the economy.
As a way of example, Democrats like to complain about any legislation that involves abortion, putting politicians or the government “between a woman and her doctor.” They then invented ObamaCare, which interjected the government as the arbiter of wants and needs in Health insurance, effectively putting government and politicians and scores of boards and bureaucrats between everyone and their insurance and their doctor.
That’s their plan for everything.
The Green energy agenda has nothing to do with the planet and everything to do with finding a way to ensure that the government decides wants and needs for everyone. A close look at their proposed solutions gives that little “secret away.” Nothing they want is good for you or the planet.
The same is true for everything. And I mean everything.
From the tank on your toilet to the car in your garage to if you can have a garage. There is no aspect of “the economy” they do not feel qualified to meddle with, and that’s the problem.
They believe that they know better not just your wants and needs today, but any day, every day, forever. The economy to a Democrat is a thing they design and run from the capitol building. In DC.
If it were one person or one family or even a group, you might be able to pull it off, but we’re talking about 330 million people living on over 600 million square miles with varying terrain, weather, and any other factor that you can imagine relating not just to individuals but families, neighborhoods, towns, counties, and the rest.
The demands of force by the state disrupt at first corners, then sectors, then the entire economy. Look at the damage done by the political response to covid for a fast-tracked version, then imagine that sort of situation every day forever.
They think they know better but they clearly have no frakking clue.
What about Wants and Needs?
To revisit Skip’s notable Quote, Hayek says, “The task of all economic activity is to reconcile the competing ends by deciding for which of them the limited means are to be used.”
The market doesn’t even know what the market needs or wants so the free market is the best way to answer the question in the least expensive way with the most likelihood of someone else finding a better/faster/cheaper way to do it – while allowing people to decide if they want more or less expensive solutions to their wants or needs or more or less of the thing itself.
The Government only knows what it wants and needs (or thinks you want or need), which is why socialism – the only means to get to communism – has always failed to keep its promises and always will because it can’t do anything that people need or want.
Democrat0ic-Socialism (Communism/Marxism) can only ever ensure the needs and wants of the ruling class are met, and it will inevitably do so at the expense of everyone and everything.
A process that destroys the mechanism that makes any needs or wants possible on a declining curve (barring significant outside support like the way the US feeds China by buying everything from them). Absent that, it must rob its own people and then its neighbors into increasing destitution until it implodes.
That is why the Founders tried to create checks and balances on power, and they would be mad at hell with how we’ve mishandled the gift they gave us.
