Free Markets and the Wilderness

Music: Allemande (BWV 995).
By Johann Sebastian Bach.
Performed by Musick's Recreation at the Free Music Archive
under an Attribution-Share Alike license.

Free markets and the wilderness
Are equally fictitious,
Myths of the nineteenth century,
In turn naïve and vicious.

One assumes an ecosphere
That never was, a place
Missing one key animal -
The indigenous human race

That for millennia lived there,
And like the wolves and bees,
Created the true ecosphere,
The one the white men seized

And held as their dominion
For farms and homes and schools,
For factories and offices,
And, yes, for nature's jewels

That they then called the wilderness,
Curated for vacations,
While those who had once lived there were
Removed to reservations.

The market also never was
Nor ever could be free,
Any more than wilderness,
Of its humanity.

All markets are manipulated
Out of need or greed,
And that's the only law, though
It's one you'll rarely read.

For few would waive advantage to
Unfettered trade restore,
Or see their families starve
To obey some so-called law.

The myth of the free market is
A tool to bludgeon those
Whose interests would be served
By protections they propose,

While those who see the market as
Pristine as wilderness
Themselves break every rule
That might cause them to earn less.

Free markets and the wilderness:
Two myths some would infer
From what would serve their interests.
But of course they never were.