Peanuts Grow in The Jungle

We've been had. 

For nearly three decades, Americans have slowly been bamboozled into thinking that we don't need government. The state, proponents of this argument contend, is always wrong and the free market always right. 

Umm, no. 

I know it's difficult, but set aside for a moment the obvious and gargantuan failures of the unfettered market that have led us to the financial, economic and cultural crisis we now face. Instead, think for just a moment about the scores of Americans who have died and fallen ill because of the misadventures in capitalism perpetrated by the Peanut Corporation of America. 

As the New York Times masterfully demonstrated in a February 8 article, the PCA blatantly and repeatedly disregarded the most basic safety and hygiene guidelines, irresponsibly putting short-term expedience and profit over public health. And thanks to the purely laissez faire attitude that has held sway in our great-but-wounded nation for so long, PCA was not required to report to the government or the public that deadly salmonella was present in its plants, nor were there a sufficient number of state-level inspectors to detect the problem and ensure it was remediated. According to the Times, "inspection reports on the Peanut Corporation of America plant over the last three years show that state inspectors — Georgia has only 60 agents to monitor 16,000 food-handling businesses — missed major problems that workers say were chronic."

This is what happens when our elected leaders worship at the altar of the unfettered market and let even the most thoughtful, minimal government oversight wither away like late-autumn wildflowers. Upton Sinclair's Gilded Age novel The Jungle comes to mind. 

It's absolutely true that government intervention with the free market can have disastrous, often unintended, effects. I have written of these effects in the past on this blog. But left entirely to its own devices, the free market will by definition infringe upon the common good. Small, thoughtful, doses of government oversight — especially such basic public health protections as clean food regulations and inspections — are absolutely essential to preserve our capitalist, democratic republic.