Liberals describe free markets in terms of evolution: "survival of the fittest... " and whatnot. It clouds their thinking, because in evolution the two principle factors are genetic drift (which produces new arrangements of genes) and natural selection (which kills off the less able arrangements of genes.) But free-markets don't shuffle and select amongst arrangements of genes; they shuffle and select amongst arrangements of memes. If a once-productive car factory closes and all of its workers get fired, its all because of a change of memes. The factory is no longer producing enough cars with the right features at the right price to convince consumers to pay for the cost of running the factory. What it uses is being wasted (labor, electricity, metal... ) because other factories or companies have a better arrangement of memes such as: newer tech, a corporate culture that's better at team-building, better engineering, etc. So those that produce more for consumers for less money with less waste prosper while those that don't... get new jobs.
Nobody dies.
(Unlike with natural selection).
Which is why it's asinine to refer to free-market capitalism as "red in tooth and claw." Losing a job sucks, but if a market is not clotted with government regulations, a new job is just around the corner. The thing that sucks more than losing a job is being stuck in a world where other peoples' jobs are protected by governments (through subsidies to Chrysler maybe? through growth of the government sector?) because memes are not then being quickly rearranged. They're being ossified. Twenty years ago we were all using cassette tapes. In twenty years I want whatever I'm listening to to make the mp3 seem as anachronistic as cassettes do today. The best way to achieve this, and equivalent improvements in other sectors, is to allow for maximum shuffling of memes.
