How could anyone hate free-market capitalism?

[gnab gib]

No one has a problem with it, in theory. But left unchecked, capitalism is predatory and exploitative. And that's why we have safety nets and social programs in place. It is not a perfect system of government, but no system is. Winston Churchill once said that capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others. Or, as he supposedly put it on another occasion, "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery."

In any event, I don't think anyone is recommending "complete government control of the economy." It just seems that way right now because there's so much talk about government intervention to "rescue" the economy. The pendulum is currently swinging in one direction, but it always inevitably swings back.

Part of the problem is that people also conflate "free markets" with "capitalism," when they are not necessarily the same thing. Adam Smith defended free markets. He envisioned a society of mostly small shopkeepers engaging in free trade with each other, in an economic system that was largely self-regulated by enlightened self-interest. He actually decried the abuses inherent in massive, unaccountable corporate structures, which have become a hallmark of modern capitalism. Nations and their governments used to have the right to revoke corporate charters if the corporation was thought to no longer be acting in the best interests of the community. That changed in the United States after the Civil War, when the courts ruled that corporations had the same rights as human beings. We've forgotten that in our day and age, where we think that corporations are sacrosanct, the cornerstone of capitalism -- when in many cases, they are symbols of the excesses and abuses of capitalism.

These things are not always as cut and dried as people would like to have them.