Free Market Fiction

By any other name, capitalism still smells the same and the smell is greed. Call it "the free market." Call it laissez-faire. Call it what you will, it's all swill. The "invisible hand" Adam Smith believed would keep capitalism in check turns out to be a grasping fist. Anyone who tells you America's so-called economic "system" is intrinsic to our "freedom" is lying, or delusional. Capitalism is not your friend.

Cupcakes, Culture and Capitalism

Where once cakes ruled, cupcakes have conquered. Kids at birthday celebrations nowadays get their own, personalized, individual, puny cupcake. Forget about "Happy Birthday Jennifer" scrawled across the top of a 12-inch cake in unhealthy pink icing; forget about the magic of a clutch of candles illuminating the expectant faces of a crowd of children waiting for the birthday girl to make a wish and blow out the candles. Forget about the subtle lesson of group consciousness and sharing manifested in that gooey confection. The replacement? One's own cupcake. Cupcakes too teach a lesson: We are all separate and alone, not part of a greater whole. What better lesson for the young inheritors of the capitalist behemoth?