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Whatever Happened to Free Market Capitalism?

Donald Unger
8 min readFeb 12, 2019

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Credit: Tristan Bowersox

Cultures Reap the Results They (Refuse to) Pay For

In the news this morning: A Desperate Shortage of Truck Drivers!

One shipping company exec lamented that, as a result, he was being forced to pass up lots of “lucrative” work.

Perhaps we can return to him later . . .

In the news on other recent mornings, we hear that people looking to hire physicians, nurses, teachers, medical coders, programmers, farmworkers, and more, face — wait for it — desperate shortages!

Well that’s odd, huh?

I mean — here in the home of The Greatest Market Economy the Universe Has Ever Seen — we have built-in mechanisms for addressing such issues, right?

We even refer to them as though they have actual legal force behind them.

Like: The Law of Supply & Demand.

You will doubtless remember this linchpin of Capitalism from the required Econ class you took in high school — it was often right after the required Civics class. Held in that space between the Art and Music Rooms? Down the hall from the Nurse’s Office?

Oh! Your school didn’t require — or even offer — Econ or Civics?

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Donald Unger
Donald Unger

Written by Donald Unger

I write what I know and what I’ve lived: humor & chronic pain; politics & parenting; business writing & cultural analysis; and . . . ranting (a lot of ranting).

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