Obama for Capitalism!

According to a report in Science, President Obama has become an advocate of market forces:

Letting market forces help the United States reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by choosing “cleaner” sources of electricity has been a popular notion among some Republicans, who oppose the Democratic alternative of putting a price on U.S. carbon emissions. Now the idea has a new advocate: President Barack Obama. Last week, Obama proposed a “Clean Energy Standard” that would require the country, by 2035, to obtain 80% of its electrical power from a list of sources that includes renewables, nuclear power, “efficient” natural gas, and coal with its CO₂ emissions captured and sequestered.

So “market forces” are where the all-wise government leaders pass a law and expect someone, somehow to achieve its end. Is the end desirable? Is the end even achievable? Who cares? As the government officials explained to an industrialist in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, “You’ll think of something, Mr Reardon!”

No wonder “the market” and “capitalism” get blamed for everything that goes wrong in the economy, when that is how they define it.