Politicians on tour, and Thomas Frank's view of the market

We're in the middle of a provincial election campaign in Ontario. Whenever there's an election in my part of the world, I stand a good chance of having many of the candidates come right to my door. This is because I live in a 21-story building - campaigners can get the message out to dozens of people without having to travel too far. And those candidates that I don't meet in person in my building are likely to be waiting, campaign literature in hand, at Broadview subway station on a weekday morning, hoping to catch commuters on their way to work.

My current sitting MPP, Peter Tabuns, holds the record for most visits. I've met him three times now: once for the current election, once for the by-election in which he got his seat, and once when he was helping a candidate for the most recent Toronto municipal election. You have to give him credit for getting himself out there.


Just re-read the following, from Thomas Frank's "The God That Sucked", and found it thought-provoking enough to quote here:

The market is a god that sucks. Yes, it cashed a few out at the tippy-top, piled up the loot of the world at their feet, delivered shiny Lexuses into the driveways of their ten-bedroom suburban chateaux. But for the rest of us the very principles that make the market the object of D'Souza's worship, of Gilder's awestruck piety, are the forces that conspire to make life shitty in a million ways great and small. The market is the reason that our housing is so expensive. It is the reason our public transportation is lousy. It is the reason our cities sprawl idiotically all across the map. It is the reason our word-processing programs stink and our medicine costs more than anyone else's. In order that a fortunate few might enjoy a kind of prosperity unequaled in human history, the rest of us have had to abandon ourselves to a lifetime of casual employment, to unquestioning obedience within an ever-more-arbitrary and despotic corporate regime, to medical care available on a maybe/maybe-not basis, to a housing market interested in catering only to the fortunate.

My own belief is that, somewhere down the line, something went wrong with the free market system. Ideally, the market should provide quality goods for customers, a decent living wage for employees, and a fair return for investors. Right now, the market seems to be only providing the latter. How do we fix this?