Capitalism… free markets… flea markets…

While the first two, especially in their unregulated form, are being rigorously challenged for their proven inclination to exploit at societies expense (“Capitalism Capitalizes!”, yours truly, DD); flea markets, especially vintage/specialty flea markets, are about as local community supported as it gets; an oasis where ALL are welcome, a sanctuary from all that is unfair in our current “free market” system, where simple economic fundamentals prevail in an environment of robust social interaction. Cash is King and second only to Trust as the reserve currency of choice. Individuals buy, sell, haggle and trade face to face, rather than face to faceless with an uncaring, digitized, eCommerce corporate entity. Outta the way online! Step aside bricks and mortar…Tarps, Tables and Cash Rule at the flea markets!

The idea for “The Flea Market Economist” came to me about fifteen years ago (as of 2020)… sometimes I wish it never did. As of now, a few hundred pages of notes and “rants” in progress… “dismal”, daunting… but somehow, fascinating. As I found myself challenging economic assumptions, peceptions, beliefs and opinions, I became intrigued with exploring the possibility that just maybe a well run vintage swap meet, like the RG Canning Pasadena Rose Bowl Flea Market with it’s two thousand regular and occasional vendor specialists from ALL walks of life and the thousands of collector customers arriving to shop by the tourist busload from ALL over the world, as well as from all parts of LA, could possibly serve as a template, a lean administrative platform, for a Main Street local economy, for a State economy… hmmmm, could it scale up to a light on bureaucracy National Economy?!! (Sorry, neo-liberal, WEForum globalization, not my thing)

A Flea Market Economy – an econo system that enables each and every citizen to find what feeds their soul; where scarcity and greed are replaced by mother nature’s abundance, human ingenuity and generosity; where inter-dependent cooperation is the rule of the land. Here at the flea markets, whether antique/collectible or funky community swap meets, the social economic basics of fair pricing versus wishful price gouging, “behavioral economics”, infrastructure and sanitation, administrative planning and tasty food/beverage logistics, taxation, security, cooperation and usually friendly competition are all on display and in action in effectively regulated, “flea market” real time; a “managed economy”, just like any successful big business/corporation, for profit or non. Celebrating Main Street self-reliance and individuality, you don’t get any more DIY independant and resourceful than flea market and swap meet vendors. (Sorry kids, since none of the entities/vendors involved “own the means of production”, this is NOT technically “Capitalism”. Hey! A future rant on the epidemic of “ism” ignorance!) 

This contrast between the simple elegance of flea market economics versus the self inflicted complexities of our current macro-economic offerings with all the post Glass-Steagall and ongoing Quantative Eased baggage attached to it (RIP 2021) has made me wonder… just what would an economic system, free of the DISTORTIONS of unregulated “free market” exploitation, free of speculation and greed, free of the manipulation of advertising and now social media “crisis” manipulation and selective science censorship, free of “corporate personhood” and public relations propaganda… a Natural Economy that has HEART and Human SOUL… what would that look like? Would an economy free of these recent 20th/21st century algorithmic anomalies, free of these Big Finance proprietary “pathogens” result in a “fair market” economic system, one that levels the playing field for all us Main Street/Flea Market working folks rather than an unregulated, soulless “free market” system that exploits labor and and the resources of it’s host society at the expense of the “smart” wealthy and tax avoiding, “Davos Man” deadbeats? 

Unfortunately, we’ll never get to social justice until we resolve economic injustice. The effectively unregulated free market system we now have should be more correctly referred to as “Exploit-ism”, where any one with enough power, influence and pathological greed can craft the legislation and buy off the legislators, making what was once illegal legal (thereby enabling moral hazard!!) giving corporate “capital” license to exploit with impunity! Exploit-ism!! Let’s just call it what it is, shall we?

Economic Pathogens? Corona viruses?! Economic Germ Theory!

In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor assisting at maternity/women’s clinic in Vienna, had an epiphany… “Ah ha! Cadaverous pathogens are killing my female patients!!” It seems his pregnant lady patients were getting sick from childbed fever and often dying at an alarming rate. What got his attention was noticing that a nearby women’s clinic, run by women, had two thirds less reported cases of illness and death. Why? His epiphany… the doctor’s hygiene, or rather, lack of, was the source of pathogens being introduced into his clinic. Iatrogenic, ie, doctor/hospital (and now Pharma!) caused disease at it’s finest! It seems the good “gentlemen” doctors often came to the maternity clinic to perform their duties right after giving autopsy lectures, which of course included cutting away on dead decaying corpses without washing their hands or surgical tools before seeing, and touching, the sick and pregnant women at the clinic! Yuck! Doctor Semmelweis stated the obvious, “Wash Your Hands!! Wash Your Surgical Tools!!” Unfortunately, many of the “gentlemen” doctors resisted or refused, thinking their physician “professional” status in society miraculously absolved them from being carriers of disease. Right. Professional Medical EGO Arrogance 101. Semmelweis’s epiphany is the perfect analogy to illustrate the current epidemic of financial arrogance and “expert-tease” that’s migrated  from Wall Street, banking and so many of the global financial institutions now infecting state/country economic administration at large; the ivory tower “professionals” who deny that the economic pathogens of GREED and speculation have anything to do with our increasingly fragile economic systems and the rapid increase in income inequality and economic injustice throughout the world. Yeah, right. And then along comes Covid Chaos and shows us just how vulnerable we really are and just how easily university/college educated “professional” arrogance is embedded in the media perception of the “experts” we are told to never question and obediently trust. Disabling critical thinking via our school and university systems, with a little help from the tabloid oriented Trusted News Inititatve consortium, makes for a perfect Sucker Society, yes?!

Regarding “expert-tease” and willful “expert” ignorance, whether in economics or the hard sciences, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts”, sayeth Richard Feynman.

Sadly, it seems that no amount of Thomas Piketty, et al, solid research and data are going to wake these indifferent wealthy elites to the reality that Greed is the economic pandemic that slowly withers a society’s soul of it’s integrity, trust and vitality. Ultimately, what do they care about Main Street economic injustice? They don’t. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to have a truly great country without a fair economic system, period. Lancon’s Law of social economic justice – a society must thoroughly achieve FAIR before it can attempt GREAT. Our current unregulated free market capitalism has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with legalized exploitation of we citizen consumers. Fair it is not. It seems the time is way overdue for us rabble to get roused and force a vaccination against greed, Bill Gates, the World Economic Forum, ALEC, etc and the legislated corruption and tax evasion in our economic systems once and for all. Something tells me Big Pharma will not be bidding on those anti-greed, vaccination contracts. 

As your self appointed 21st century economic Semmelweis, in addition to relating monthly/bi-weekly rants (maybe!) and observations from the vintage flea market front lines, The Flea Market Economist will also be promoting the obvious… “Ditch Greed, Live Abundantly” (yours truly). Or as the metaphysical economist P. Yogananda put it, “Wealth is having what you need when you need it”. Bravo! Small time, manageable flea market speculation is one thing; unmanageable institutionalized global greed and speculation that affects entire societies and sovereign nations, i.e., “Casino Capitalism”, enabled by the plague and variations of “Corporate Personhood”; enough is ENOUGH! It’s once again time to separate the corporate and financial exploiters spreading their financial fungus – from the most egregious vulture hedge funds to the seemingly innocent proprietary computer speculation programs… it’s time to put them ALL back in vintage bottles of Glass-Steagall tight tight tight regulation and tax their easy money, rent seeking asses into tightly managed oblivion, just as they were during the happy (?) days of the Eisenhower administration when much of “America Great” ness was funded by a 91% tax on the wealthy and a 50% tax on big business and corporations (not on regular working folks! Google it, kids). The promotion of taxation as an “investment” in America, whether for big business or the wealthy, was not a novel idea then. It was a noble ideal. And now, post Corona, the re-separation of the Main Street economy from the Wall Street Casino is essential to restore economic equilibrium before it’s too late. Too late? Oh-oh….

In future episodes of the FME… proposing a truly democratic economic system built around a center piece of representative, “democratic taxation” where every tax paying voter (if/when voter disenfranchisement gets resolved) selects, at IRS tax time, from a menu of social necessities; i.e., education, health, security, pure food and water, infrastructure, mandated local flea markets, etc etc; the percentage of his/her federal and state tax payment that goes to EACH administrative item they have selected. Juicy! The voters, we Flea Marketeers, decide where our tax earnings, the fruit of our labor, is to go. Congress, not as much as it’s currently used to. It’s also the idea that seems to get the most robust resistance, which I take as a really good sign.

Ha! A caveat. Enter Emperor Dismal Dave. A Proclamation – First and Foremost, those who choose not to vote, choose not to be an American citizen and don’t have a say in MY “Democratic Taxation System”…ie, if you choose not to vote, you will have no standing! (not to be confused w legitimate inabilty to vote!) If you don’t vote and pull your weight by paying your fair share of taxes (or public service), sorry, no “earned benefits” for you buddy, no Social Security, no Medicare, no free education, no police when you need them, etc. Of course, this assumes not having the bloated bureaucracy and institutionalized corruption embedded in our current form of government. But, managing deadbeats aside, the biggest question… what would it take to make America “FAIR” again like it was aspiring to be when America was perceived to be “Great”? And just as importantly, what would it take to make all/most of us Americans see this aspiration as a team effort where the voluntary participation of all is essential to achieving fairness for all? We’ll get to “great” later. And now for the really subversive question… is the perception of “great” ultimately just a dead end ego trip? Just who defines “great” anyway? Great for me most likely will be different for you. What are it’s social and economic metrics? Is it fair for all? Or would a baseline, stable mediocrity do? These are some of the core social economic ideas The Flea Market Economist intends to highlight, explore and return to as the covid pharma chaos and commie China/WHO/CDC/HHS sabotage continues to be slowly exposed (and eventually dismantled and destroyed?!) 

You see, ultimately, it’s all a matter of “self interest”… when my vintage records and sub-culture clientele are doing well, I do well. My vintage goodies and vinyl LP’s, as cool and as soul satisfying as they are, are not necessities, especially as we slowly recover from this covid generated, pre-meditated meltdown. I continue to be the canary deep in the economic coal mine, at the mercy of my customer’s disposable income. And when that disposable income is jeopardized by an increasingly exploitive, speculative economic system based on greed in collusion with the sensationalist tabloid media and Big-Tech’s “move fast and break things” mindset; Hell Yes!, I take it personally! My “self-interest” and livelihood are at stake! And in my flea market retaill world, if you “move fast and break” it, you just bought it, pinhead!!

So, the challenge… how do we make America’s economic system fair again? Sadly, we’ve forgotten that aspiring to being fair for all is what makes America great. Our challenge, to “Make America Fair Again”, because if we don’t attain fairness, like I stated earlier, we’ll NEVER ever attain greatness! Period. We’ve attempted this before, but… do we have The Will to attempt it again… and just maybe see it through this time?

Welcome to The Flea Market Economist where vinyl and flea market sub-culture gracefully collides with micro/macro and achievably enlightened economics. Opinion? Absolutely! Informed opinion! Truth in journalism… and always a work in progress!

All Rights Reserved © Dave Lancon May 2020… Born under the heat of Corona Chaos. Updated August 2022.