I don’t believe in the free market.

I should clarify for those of you who have followed my blog long enough to have read my ‘I believe in the free market’ post a month or so ago: I believe the free market is the best way to get to the top of the bell curve in the cheap/high-quality matrix. But what I don’t believe is that the free market has any capacity whatsoever to make anyone happy. Not in a meaningul way.

I look around my house, and I realize that I am a bad consumer. I don’t have the lastest of anything, and I haven’t spent money on unnecessary consumer goods in months. Being unemployed doesn’t hurt. But the important part is that I am happy. Many people, I’m sure, would consider this un-American. If you’re not happy because of your new toys, and you’re not happy because you get to waste a third or more of your life working for someone, then what could possibly make you happy?

Well, the kid, for one. But more importantly, I’ve learned recently that people — relationships — make me happy. I realize that I like the church I go to, the games I play, and the parties I attend because they bring me close to people who are good. They are the kind of people who volunteer to go to local disaster sites and help the newly-impoverished. The kind of people who play games for fun, not for the thrill of dominating an opponent.

I totally believe that a free market is economically the best thing for a country. But I don’t believe that ‘economically’ is the best metric to measure the health of a country by.