The invisible benevolent hand.

We're hearing a lot of talk about the free market these days. It's a touchstone for the tea party movement and is trotted out as the solution to all the monetary woes this country faces. Far right candidates like Sharron Angle think it is the fix for everything. As she said in her recent debate with Harry Reid: "The solutions to the health care cost of insurance – are free market."
Free marketeers like Angle and Rand Paul differ from the old Ayn Rand-style libertarian free marketeers in one important aspect. They are also religious extremists. This might seem inconsequential, but one informs the other. Randians (not to be confused with Raelians) see the market as the vehicle in which the cream will rise to its deserved position at the top of society and the milk remains just to hold it up. The religious free marketeer cannot help but feel Adam Smith's invisible hand is attached to the all-loving arm of Almighty God, who will ensure his faithful will be rewarded. It's the starry-eyed idealism of those who believe in a free market anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become a tycoon. They forget there is not much real estate at the top and the path up is littered with corpses.
The fact is the market does not have a mind. There is no intent behind it and it is brutal. It rewards ruthlessness and punishes selflessness. It might give you the keys to the Bentley, but it might leave you battered and bloody on the side of the road. And when that happens in a world ruled by the free market, don't expect to hear any sirens coming your way.
The middle-class hoards waving flags and unread Constitutions at tea party rallies shout for free market because they think if the government would just get their hands off of everything they'll all be much richer. They can't fathom the idea that they would be left unprotected and at the mercy of the oligarchs who are funding their little movement. One only need to look at the social structure of the gilded age to see what unbridled capitalism looks like.
The market will take care of it? Oh yes it will. It always has. It's just a violent game and most of us are bound to lose.