There was nothing unique about these posts you can find the sentiment expressed in many venues; in long form articles or shouting matches via Internet forums. The Free Market is the Answer. In fact it is the Answer to almost any problem. The problem mostly being people who want "free lunches" or in other words Liberals and/or Socialists.
The myth of the Free Market is that anyone can succeed,(and that they do it alone). Success is defined by wealth. The liturgy intones that the competition is fair, "merit based" they say. Economic success can be achieved through hard work alone but is most often achieved when allied with talent, birth or access to opportunity. Economic success once achieved means further access to resources; among them medicine, education, legal council, security of person and political access. A feedback loop ensues , increasing the chances of remaining on top socially and economically.
The example of that young woman is a sort-of-truth. She is an exception. Exceptional people are capable of doing special things, while the average person does well, average. The Free Market takes the exceptional and almost declares them the "every person". Many of us embrace this selection process as reasonable, no doubt guided by the belief that they are that strange animal the average-exceptional. A bar set unnecessarily high, but let's pretend it isn't
At this point some conservative will introduce the idea of leveling. That I'm intent on creating some communistic/socialist dystopia of sameness. It's like asking Osain Bolt to run the 100m with extra weight so some sad sack can win Gold. "You want everyone equal" It's a false equivalency to suggest that fairness somehow equals repression of the gifted. I want Bolt to run flat out, but I'd have to be insane to use that as a determiner of resource access. We can craft a system that leaves plenty of room for Osain Bolt achieve his greatness and for the rest of us to make our way albeit in a slower fashion.
An unhappy corollary the "High Bar" is that if you remain poor in a Nation with a Free Market structure it's your fault.That position allows a government to do only the bare minimum for its citizens. It is a handy idea that meshes well with other conservative positions like, small government, minimum regulation and low taxes. We know everyone can run a hundred meters in under ten seconds if they felt like it.
On a personal level it allows a successful citizen to rationalize extreme wealth, existing alongside extreme poverty. To accept tacitly or even openly support the darker nature of the Free Market, as the gate keeper, tasked with the duty of separating out the superior and inferior citizen, an economic "Natural Selection"; a bottle neck for the worthy to pass through an be come cleansed. Forgetting completely that the Free Market is a created system; that it does what we want it to do; not what it has to do, as with a gravity's effect on water.
We have abandoned systems that grant power through birth, gender, religion or race. But we left untouched the underlying reasons for pursing power, resource control and exploitation. Attempts have been made to tackle the problem ,some ended in failure and horror-communism, and some have done better like the Liberal/Socialist Democratic welfare state. A work in progress .
I have no quarrel with leaving the Free Market to do what it's good at; meeting the consumer needs of our citizens. If I want a nice comfortable sofa I'll depend on the Free Market and the competition that leads to innovation it is supposed to engender between rival business. A free and equal society is not something you can't get that via the Free Market.
A Note: Hayley Miller received help from One Step Forward a youth homeless shelter funded in part grants by from the local government.
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