(5:59 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Finding Market Solutions to Terror

All the market fundamentalists out there should be delighted at the plan of the Pentagon to set up an intelligence community based on the model of a commodities market. Claiming that government agencies have been proven wrong again and again (not in this story, but in a related one I heard on NPR), officials think that those who know their money is at stake will make the most accurate possible predictions. A few points:

• Actual commodities markets predicted back in the nineties that our economy would be absolutely booming right now. I'm pretty sure they were wrong about that.
  
• I'm not sure how the people in this market would be rewarded -- after all, wouldn't they occasionally be betting on something we want to prevent? Do we really want the government creating a group people with a vested financial interest in the North Koreans attacking us?
  
• As usual, when someone talks about following the models of private enterprise due to the failure of government agencies, they often fail to note the many ways in which the government was set up to fail. In this case, the government agencies in question didn't even really "fail" -- it's just that their customers were jackasses. As you'll learn from any right winger, it's not the company's fault if the customer is an idiot (regarding lawsuits against companies for dubious injuries, such as the infamous hot McDonald's coffee incident). (On a related note, often when a government charity organization or public service agency, such as public schools, Medicare, or Social Security "fails," it's because it was purposefully underfunded, so that it would "fail," so that there would be an excuse to underfund it further, because you don't want to "throw money at a problem." No, in order to solve the problems with government social programs, it is necessary to radically change them -- by destroying them.)

I think the Democrats who objected to the plan said it best when they called it "ridiculous." What they fail to recognize is that this is the new common sense: Finding Market Solutions. I know a lot of good Christian people whose ears perk up whenever they hear the term "market solutions," because as Jesus could tell you, modelling every human interaction after a system designed to promote and exploit human greed is the only moral and practical way to run a society.

Now please skip to Robb's post on his favorite music, if you have not read it already. That's right: this is a Christian blog, and instead of my normal relentless self-promotion, what we have here is a promotion of the other. This is because I, Adam Kotsko, am a wonderful Christian person.

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